In Dreams
by foodforever
Summary: [Sequel to On Loan] Five years after the battle of the Eldjötnar, Kate Lee returns to Midgard, estranged from her husband and near powerless. Her desire to recuperate and recover from her recent emotional turmoil is, however, foiled by the emergence of her brother's dangerous new abilities and the return of both an old threat and a penitent Loki.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. All of this is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.**

* * *

_Five years ago, I woke in the eternal halls of Asgard with immortality newly woven into my blood. I told my family the entire truth of what I had been doing and who the God of Lies, Mischief, and Chaos actually was to me. _

_Three years ago, they'd gotten over the disapproval of his sketchier past enough to come back with me to the golden citadel and watch me get married to him. _

_Three months ago, I was hurled back to Midgard in a flurry of sobs and fury. I was still in the loose sleeping gown that I'd slid on two days prior. My engagement and wedding rings lay gleaming in my jewellery box on my dresser in the wardrobe that Loki and I had shared. _

_I had left Midgard as Kate Lee, a girl giddy with the prospect of spending forever with a man she loved more fiercely than life itself. _

_I returned as Princess Katharine, consort of Prince Loki of Asgard; cold, empty, and running from my husband._

* * *

_I went home. Not Stark Tower, not SHIELD, not New York. When I turned up at my parents' doorstep in Singapore at three in the morning, exhausted from flying to the main island from the outlying one that Heimdall had thrown me at, my mother took one look at me and burst into tears. _

_During the first month, I only left my room for meals. I kept the blinds down and lived in darkness like a fucking vampire because sunlight reminded me of afternoons in the Asgardian sunshine, and afternoons in the Asgardian sunshine reminded me of _him_. I'd always been thin and fair, but I grew skeletal and frail, losing whatever weight I had gained from three years of ambroisa. My mother fretted and shoved vitamin pills at me, which I woodenly swallowed. _

_My father, predictably, exploded that first night I was home. He ranted and railed at the man I had married, and begged me to tell him what had happened. As if you could run up to the home of the gods and get the most dangerous god in a chokehold. As if you could make me feel better by hurting him more. _

_It's not that I wouldn't tell him. I couldn't. I couldn't tell anyone. Remembering why I had left made me feel like I had inhaled an ocean and it was slowly drowning me from the inside. _

_My little brother, Ian, was only fifteen and didn't fully understand why I had come back. Not to belittle fifteen year olds, but he is privileged and blessed and sheltered and doesn't fully appreciate the extent of emotional damage that could cause the breakup of a marriage. All he knew was that his big sister was a shadow of a wraith and spent her time either staring at her hands or crying. One day, he came to my room, sat on my bed and held me gently like one would hold a small bird. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry you're so sad, and I'm sorry that I can't help you to do anything about it." _

_I just rested my hands on his back, remembering when he was the little child and I was the strong one, making him laugh with telekinetic tricks and soothing his bruises and scrapes. Things had changed. _

_After that one last concentrated burst of willpower that carried me home on that first night, my telekinesis stopped working. It's probably because I couldn't focus enough on things to do anything with them, but it didn't bother me. I didn't even try to access my telepathy. My own mind was a chaotic mess. I didn't need to deal with the thoughts of others. _

_During the second month, I spent my days in the safety of my family's garden, so different from the ones in the palace. I re-learned the names of the tropical jungle around me: sealing wax palm, sago tree, frangipani. _

_I took to wearing frangipanis in my hair. Local custom associated them with death. I felt that it was fitting. Death to a marriage, death to a lifetime, death. _

_I started helping out in the kitchens. Everything was so unfamiliar, but I found my hands remembering the way to make _achar_, and I realised that my nose still knew when anything needed more chilli. My grandmother would sit in a corner of the wet kitchen with her woven fan, guiding my measurements where memory failed. Food solves all problems, she used to tell me. They didn't really, but being in the kitchen tethered me more strongly to what was happening now, so I didn't think about what had happened before. _

_At the start of the third month, I began volunteering at the daycare near my house. I coddled and cared for bright-eyed, bouncing children, braiding hair with shaking fingers and perfecting my hot-chocolate-making skills. _

_Everything was becoming bearable again right when _he_ came to get me back._

* * *

**A/N: This is going to be a little darker than **_**On Loan**_**; it probably won't be as jocular, because Kate's dealing with some trauma. Only this prologue will be in first person – the other chapters will ping pong between Kate and Loki in third person, because I figured it wouldn't be **_**entirely **_**fair to Loki if we just looked at their marriage from Kate's point of view.**

**If you haven't read _On Loan_, I recommend that you do! It provides a great deal of context. **

**Please review and let me know what you think!**

**_Achar_:**** A cold dish of pickled vegetables and pineapples.**


	2. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. All of this is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk. **

* * *

It had been a pretty long day.

Kate had unstuck little Erica's hands from the table, saved Yi Yang from swallowing a fly "for fun", and broken up a very messy brawl between two large girls and one small boy that had originated from an argument about who deserved the last two minutes on the swings.

Not that she was complaining. Tiring was good.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes, smearing a line of blue poster paint across her forehead, and sighed lustily as Deborah, Shakila and Wen Hui, the other teachers, gathered up backpacks and herded noisy little munchkins into their parents' cars.

She was idly wondering if she should give in to her mother's nagging and go shopping with her that weekend when Wen Hui hustled back into the playroom, looking ridiculously energetic for the end of a workday. Kate raised a lazy eyebrow in the midst of wiping down arts-and-crafts stations.

"There's a man out there saying that he's waiting for you," Wen Hui babbled excitedly. "_So _dreamy. You never told me that your boyfriend was _ang moh_!"

Kate's blood turned cold, and it was as if her heart had stopped beating. "Husband," she corrected her friend, numbly. "I don't want to see him; did you tell him I'm here?"

"She did not have to."

Loki was leaning against a bookshelf near the dorway, polished and gorgeous as always. He was in a _suit_; a fucking three piece suit, looking wildly out of place amongst the haphazard innocence of a childcare centre for three to six year olds. He narrowed his eyes, coolly assessing the two women before him: Wen Hui flushed, but Kate just looked away. His heart stuttered at how beautiful she looked even with paint on her face and her hair in a mess, and it must have shown on his face – only, neither woman saw it. "I guessed that you had come back home."

Kate was now worrying the hem of her T-shirt, trying to contain her distress. Part of her wanted to run to him and go back to how it all was. The other half was a jumble of memories – panic, screaming, uncontrollable grief and hurt.

Loki cleared his throat and addressed Wen Hui, who had picked up on Kate's discomfort and was about to order him off the premises. "If you don't mind, I would like to speak to my wife in private."

Wen Hui stayed put – there was another fifteen seconds of awkward silence – then Kate mumbled something along the lines of _it'll be fine, I'll see you in ten minutes._ The older woman didn't look too pleased about leaving Kate alone with this suave, quietly dangerous man, but she tamped down on her feelings and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Once they were alone, Loki closed the space between him and Kate in three huge strides. "Kate," he dropped to his knees, pleading, "I was excessively harsh and overreacted; I apologise for my actions – please, just come home-"

Kate moved away shaking her head. "How did you find me? I asked Frigga to-"

Loki made an impatient gesture. "I broke through that veiling spell yesterday afternoon." His expression tightened. "It is not my mother's place to meddle in our relationship by hiding you from my sight."

Kate's temper flared. "You made it very clear that you didn't want a relationship anyways. Leave. You're not welcome here."

Pain flashed across Loki's face; he opened his mouth to say something else, but Kate had stormed past him and left before he could get the words out.

She ducked into the small office by the door to get her bag and blew past the other teachers who were still waiting for parents to collect their children. She registered their concern, and noted that she probably should stop to put their minds at ease, but she had to get out of there. Breaking into a run, she sprinted the ten minutes from the centre to her home, trying to put as much distance as she could between Loki and herself. She knew that it was pointless – having a husband who could teleport basically meant that she could never actually run away from a fight – but the physical exertion calmed her.

By the time she clanged the gate shut behind her with trembling fingers, most of the anxiety she'd felt upon meeting Loki had passed – _at least, for now_.

She knew that he'd been in her room the second she opened the door.

The perfume of Asgardian lilies saturated the air, drawing her attention to an elegant glass vase of the golden flowers standing on her dresser. The memory came, even as she tried to shove it away.

_They were in the gardens at the palace the day before their trip to Midgard to tell her parents about her immortality. "It's a new beginning!" she'd exclaimed gleefully, prancing along the path as Loki eyed her with amusement. "Everything's going to change."_

"_Not _everything_," Loki reminded, sneaking a golden flower into her hair. "You will still look lovely in gold." _

_Kate blushed, suddenly struck dumb by the affection in Loki's eyes. He smirked. "And you will still bounce around like an excitable rabbit in my mother's formal gardens." Laughing, he offered her his arm as she snorted, but self consciously tucked her hair behind her ear. They ambled along in companionable silence until they reached a little stone bench by a fountain, where they sat, drinking in the sunshine. _

_Loki reached over to adjust the flower in her braid. "I'll have one made for you in gold," he promised, "and you will wear it in your hair as a reminder of this dawning Spring." _

Kate wrapped her hands around her belly, trying to still her shaking. The golden comb inlaid with delicate, blooming lilies lay in a velvet box, just as it had the day she took it out to wear for her wedding.

Her control snapping, she swept the lilies – both those in the vase and the golden comb – off her dresser, before collapsing into tears amongst the dying flowers and broken glass.

* * *

Loki had knelt in the playroom for a good half-minute after Kate's departure, stewing in bitterness and regret.

_Of course she wouldn't want you back_, the better part of him whispered. _You fucked up. More royally than you usually do. She's better off where you can't hurt her_.

Still, a tiny bit of him knew that she still loved him – and as long as she still felt that way about him, he'd keep trying.

_Still_, he winced, getting to his feet, _it wouldn't do me any good to stay here_.

He teleported to Stark Tower, belatedly realising that it was five in morning in that part of the world. Going straight to Tony's bar, he helped himself to the first bottle of whisky he could find, pouring it liberally into a glass and tossing it down like a shot. That really wasn't the way to drink whisky (especially the best whisky, and Tony _always _had the best), but honestly, Loki couldn't give a fuck.

He was starting to sink into his brooding good and proper when he was interrupted by Jarvis, who'd finally noticed his presence. "Good morning, Prince Loki. Shall I wake Mr Stark to inform him of your presence?"

Loki debated the merits of this. Tony would probably be pissed at being woken up at 5AM. But he wanted company, because he'd been shunning human contact if he could help it since Kate left, and it was starting to get depressing.

Fuck it. Tony would forgive him for being selfish.

"Yes, please. Tell him that I'm drinking his whisky without him, and that he'd better come up if he wants to have any before I finish it."

"Noted, sir."

This done, Loki tossed back another glass of whisky and refilled the glass, glaring moodily out into the city. Thor was here, visiting Foster as a guest in Tony's house, but Loki did _not _want to be around him at the moment. Thor had obviously heard about that night, but he chose not to bring it up, because he didn't quite know how to deal with it. The few times that he'd run into him in the halls in Asgard since Kate fled, conversation had been stilted before Thor hurried off, as if a mutilated relationship was something contagious. Loki had enough of that shit.

Tony slouched into the room, moaning and groaning and whining about how a man couldn't get a decent night's rest in his own billion-dollar tower. He stopped short when he saw Loki musing darkly over a glass with half a bottle of whisky already gone.

"Motherfucker, Loki, did Kate refuse to have sex with you or something? Why the fuck are you _here _so goddamn early?"

Loki ignored the question entirely, opting instead to magic another glass into existence and pour a measure for Tony.

Tony took it, suspicious. "Are you mad at me? Because I can't think of why you would hate me enough to wake me up at the goddamn ass-crack of dawn. I was up till _three_, I'll have you know. Pepper was feeling pretty frisky, and I never say no to frisky. Did Kate tell you about the time she caught me moderating your fan page on Facebook? Because before you get angry at me for _trivialising the office of princelihood _or whatever, I'll have you know that you are _very _popular."

Loki held up a hand wearily. Already, he was regretting his desire for company. "I did not understand _anything _that you were saying. But if you _must _know, Kate and I are…" – here, he fought to find a word that wouldn't make him want to stab himself in the eye for fucking up so badly - "separated, for the time being."

"What the flying fuck?" Tony was so horrified by the news that he actually paused in the act of bringing alcohol to his lips. The two of them were just _fine _three months ago! "Then what about- "

He was cut off by a violent gesture on Loki's part. Understanding dawned, and the other man put the glass down in order to pat Loki awkwardly on the back. "She'll be fine. She'll come around, you'll see."

Loki was now silently staring into his glass. Tony took a tiny sip of whisky and coughed. Even _he _wasn't enough of a nutcase to start the day by drinking at dawn. Setting the glass aside, he motioned towards the living room. "Why don't we play a spot of chess, or something? Start the day right by taxing our minds and not our livers."

Grumpily, Loki brought the bottle and his glass with him to the coffee table as Tony set up the chessboard. Just as he set the bottle on the table, however, a sudden tremor shook the tower. Confused, both men stared at each other over the vibrating coffee table (Loki had lifted the bottle right back up in case it shattered, because good booze was _precious_), but the shaking was over in the time it took for Tony to swear.

Abandoning the chessmen, Tony raced to the terrace, checking on the city below. Apart from some extremely bewildered early-morning commuters, there was no damage, no actual panic – nothing. "Huh." He walked back into the building slowly, ruminating on the mystery of it all. "We don't sit on a fault line. There isn't any construction happening on this block. Where the fuck did that come from?"

Loki, on his part, was troubled. Nothing happened for no reason, but he couldn't sense any effect stemming from the random tremor. Tony shrugged and filed away the event in his mind, sitting down on the rug beside him and cautiously moving a pawn forward. Loki moved his knight out in response, trying to shake off the bad feeling. Whatever consequences stemming from the quake would make themselves known in time – but he still was extremely uneasy as he settled into a mindbender of a game.

* * *

_Loki ducked under a bullet and tried to maintain his shield with his one working hand – his other was broken in two places from when he protected Kate from a falling chunk of the guardhouse a quarter mile back. Thoroughly disgruntled, he ducked behind a low wall and switched to firing shots above it, praying that no one was shooting at him from higher ground. He still wouldn't put it past Clint, who was supposed to be taking out snipers from his nest somewhere, to let a couple of shots free in the hope that one of them would reach him. _

_Clint could hold a grudge for longer than his mother. _

_Stark landed beside him, inordinately cheerful. "All right, Reindeer Games?" _

_Loki grunted, peeked over the wall to kill a man who was getting too close, and ducked back behind it, just missing machine gun fire. "I cannot fathom why this drug king built a mansion in the middle of the blasted _jungle_. I also cannot fathom why it takes so _goddamn _long for three superhumans to find a cache of contraband experimental super-soldier serum inside a mouldy house the size of a garden shed in Asgard." _

_Stark shot at a guy who'd managed to sneak up around the wall while Loki was bitching and distracted by pain. "Well, it's drug _lord,_ actually. Why are you here again, if you hate it so much?" _

_Loki ground his teeth as he concentrated on trying not to get killed. By the nine, how many gangsters could a man possibly have in his employ? "That is a ridiculous question." _

_Stark rolled his eyes. Of course, the blue psychopath would insist on accompanying Kate on every mission that she ran. The guy had serious separation anxiety. _

"_Why are you here? Are you not supposed to be _above_, providing _air support_?" _

_Stark shifted awkwardly. "My flight boosters got hit. I'm grounded." _

_He'd just finished talking when a grenade was lobbed over the wall to land between the two of them. _

_Loki freaked out, turned Jötun, and tackled Stark to the ground, throwing up a thick dome of ice around them both. Not even Stark's armour could withstand something that close range, and Kate would be very sad if he died. They'd become friends, somehow. He didn't really get that. _

_The explosion ripped through the wall, hurling shrapnel in every direction, but the dome held. Loki cracked it open and staggered to his feet as the boom was replaced by a loud ringing in his ears, which thankfully dissipated as his cells knit back together rapidly. Too bad that it took longer to set bones. _

_The good news was that they were still alive. The bad news was that they had no cover. _

_Better news was that his girlfriend, Rogers, and the Widow were thundering out of the mansion with the cache slung over the Captain's back, Kate clearing a way through the gunfire by casually knocking gunmen out with psionic spikes to the mind. Loki would have swelled with pride if he hadn't been so injured. His beloved really was getting quite ruthless. A+ for influence. _

"_What happened to him?" Kate asked as she eyed Stark flounder around in chunks of ice. Loki shrugged, and she took that as 'I saved his ass but I don't want to talk about it.' That was cool. At least he saved his ass._

"_Are we done kissing yet?" Clint demanded, leaping down from a tree somewhere. "The transport is here. Let's move." _

_The quinjet only had three cable lines to hoist people up, but Kate was powerful enough to lift the rest on board with her telekinesis. _She honestly is pretty powerful_, Loki noted appreciatively. That was a pretty big turn on. _

_He was about to project something inappropriate into Kate's mind when he was interrupted by Stark, who'd shucked his helmet and was looking extremely awkward. "So. Lokes. Thanks for saving my life there." _

_Loki inclined his head, unsure of where this was going. _

"_I, err. Ok, Kate really digs you, and I was pretty leery about that, but thanks for shielding me from that grenade. I know that you aren't the whole self-sacrificing kind of guy like Steve, but I appreciate that you care enough about what Kate thinks of me to protect me. Yeah." _

_It suddenly struck Loki that Stark was_ making nice_. Figuring that if he was going to make friends with anyone in the Avengers clique, he might as well make friends with the most brilliant one, he stuck out a hand in the way he'd seen other Midgardians do. Stark stared at it for a moment before shaking it gingerly. "You are welcome, Stark, but it is what should have been done in any case."_

_Stark grinned at that. "It would be an embarrassment to kill us both, eh? Whole bunch of fat crooks accomplished what alien armies couldn't. Oh, the shame." _

_Loki laughed outright. It was true. They'd been getting complacent. _

"_Anyways," Stark continued, "Call me Tony. And whenever you and Kate are around, don't bunk at SHIELD; come to my place. I've got pretty sweet guest rooms, if you recall – or, more like Pepper decorated some pretty sweet guest rooms. You can claim one for your own."_

_Loki was truly thrilled about that. Staying at SHIELD when Kate felt the urge to "go back to Midgard and make (herself) useful" was worse than an extended field trip to Helheimr – now _that _was a trip that no one should ever speak about, ever. "We thank you for your invitation, Star- Tony. I shall inform Kate of this immediately. I have a feeling that she dislikes SHIELD's accommodations even more than I do." _

_Tony clapped Loki on his good shoulder (thankfully; he still hadn't had the time to set the bones in his bad one). "No big, Avatar. It's not like you're going to bring any more alien shit to my Tower, right?"_

* * *

**A/N: REVIEW PLEASE!**

**_Ang moh: _literally Hokkien for 'red hair', it means "White person".  
**


	3. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. This is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk. **

* * *

Kate was dreaming.

She was flying above the ocean in Asgard, exhilarated by her new abilities. Loki's laughter, infectious and hearty, rang out loudly over the drone of the engine of the skiff that he was piloting.

"Race you to the cliffs," she called over her shoulder, and zoomed off. Loki laughed again, and she heard the engine kick up a notch.

She didn't know if he was letting her win or if she really was that fast, but he was falling further and further behind her – and then, he wasn't there any more. Kate jerked to a stop, suddenly afraid. The sky was still the bright, cloudless azure of a bright summer's day, and the golden sun still patterned the ocean below her with gold. But, despite the beauty of her surroundings, Kate felt foreboding uncoil like a snake in her gut.

"The dark will breed with nightmares," a voice whispered in the corners of her mind. Kate clapped her hands over her ears, trying to close out the awful ring of prophecy. "Steel yourself, Lady Katharine. Your fear will pave a battleground."

_Skuld_, Kate thought wildly, _this is Skuld, the Norn of Debt and Future_.

"What do you _mean_?" she demanded, hands still over her ears. There was no answer, and she realised that she was alone on the outskirts of Asgard, floating in thin air. Panicking, she revolved in a slow circle, reaching out for anyone, anything, to hold on to.

"_Jie_?"

Ian was on the cliffs ahead of her, looking extremely rattled. Confused, Kate moved a little closer, but she hadn't needed to; although he was standing at least a mile away from her, he seemed to be right beside her. _What dream is this_? She reached out to touch him, but recoiled as she actually felt the fabric of his shirt against her fingers. _This is no dream – at least, not for him_.

For a heartbeat, the siblings stared at each other in shock. Then Kate jolted awake in bed, breathing fast and drenched in sweat.

* * *

Without preamble, she bolted from her room and ran to her brother's, throwing the door open and flicking on the light. For one terrible, suspended moment, her heart actually stopped beating.

Ian was tangled in his sheets, convulsing.

It was as if time had stopped, and all she could do was watch as her baby brother writhed, his muscles stretched to breaking point. Then he knocked his lamp off his bedside table, and the sound of it crashing to the floor was enough to kick her into action.

Screaming for her parents, Kate grabbed a pen from Ian's desk and jammed it down his throat so that he wouldn't swallow his tongue. She tried to hold him down with her telekinesis, but her abilities slipped away from her even as she reached for them. Frustrated, she kept the pen firmly in his mouth and sat on him, trying to keep his torso down as she steadied his head. His skin was cold and clammy with sweat, but worryingly, she couldn't feel his heart beating, even with her forearm over his chest.

Her parents pounded into the room, and she was grateful that they didn't stop to panic. Her father took over the job of holding Ian down as her mother kept the pen in his mouth, freeing up Kate's hands. Unsure if it would even work, Kate gripped his temples, closed her eyes and opened her mind.

* * *

She found him immediately, stranded at the cliffs where her dream had left off. He was curled up into a ball near the edge of the cliff, face in his hands as he muttered to himself that he _had_ to wake up. The peaceful calm of the outer cliffs of Asgard was no more – she was thrown to her knees immediately upon materialising as the ground rumbled and chunks of rock broke off from the cliffs to crash into the ocean below. Kate took a moment to marvel at the reality of the dream – the grass was waxy and sharp beneath her palms, and she felt the humidity that signalled the start of a storm cling to her skin – before scrambling to her shaky feet. "_Ian!_"

He lifted a terrified, tear-stained face to her. "I can't wake up," he whispered. "This is _real_."

Kate stumbled over to him, the movement of the cliffs knocking her to the ground just as she reached him. _Loki mentioned something like this before_, she thought frantically, but fought to project calmness. It wouldn't do for both of them to be freaking out. "Ian," she took his face in her hands, trying to focus his attention. "Right now, we're on an astral plane. You created this by giving reality to my dream. We need to get back to our bodies, so I need you to concentrate on going home, ok? Ignore everything else," – the ground shuddered and she raised her voice to be heard over a crack of thunder that boomed across their backs – "and look at me. Stay calm. Think about sleeping in your bed, and Mama and Papa. _Calm down_."

The cliffs collapsed just as Ian shut his eyes and inhaled deeply.

* * *

Kate felt herself slam back into her body, the momentum knocking her off the bed. Above her, Ian had collapsed into Mama's arms, and her parents were in full-blown frightened parent mode. As she clambered back up to rest against the bedpost, she realised that her parents were staring at her in agitation. Kate scrubbed her face with her hands, overwhelmed and frustrated. So, Ian was a mutant, just like her. But he had to learn how to control his powers before he accidentally wandered into someone's mind and got trapped there. She couldn't teach him how to batten down his mind – that wasn't how her powers worked. Even when she was guiding Ian out of her dream, she'd just broadcasted her consciousness to the general vicinity, banking on Ian to latch on to the familiar mind. Unfortunately, the only person she knew who could help him was also the last person that she wanted to see, let alone speak to.

But for Ian's sake, she had to put aside her own feelings and ask Loki if he would consent to tutor Ian.

After feeding Ian some sleeping pills so that he wouldn't dream, Kate left her parents to watch over him and padded to her room to call Tony, who _might _be with Loki. The Asgardian still refused to carry a mobile phone around with him, deeming it a silly mortal plaything, and since her telepathy was weakened, she couldn't mind-speak to him over long distances – only god knew where he was now.

The phone only rang twice before Loki answered. "… Kate?"

She hadn't expected him to pick up. Fuck Tony and his fucking caller ID.

"Erm, Loki?"

"Yes?" God, he sounded so ridiculously hopeful. She almost cracked, but steeled herself and soldiered on.

"I need your help. Ian is dreamwalking, and he almost got trapped in mine and died. I know that we're having problems right now, but I don't know anyone else who has studied enough to tutor him in keeping his mind closed."

"Oh."

She fought to keep the tremor out of her voice. "Will you come down here and train him?"

Silence.

"Loki?"

When he answered, he was unfailingly polite – just as courteous as he would be to a stranger whom he wasn't sure if he liked yet. Listening felt as if he'd reached into her chest and fitted iron bands around her heart. "Of course, Kate. I will come by tomorrow afternoon."

"I'm sorry to trouble you after…" here she trailed off, unsure of whether she should reference that afternoon or the blowout three months prior. Or their entire fucking relationship, actually.

He cut in, saving her the trouble of deciding. "It will be no trouble at all. Good day, Kate."

And he hung up.

Kate sunk to the floor, exhausted and tearless. It would certainly be for the best if she was over him, but she very obviously wasn't. Too tired to crawl over to her bed, she curled up on the floor to rest. Something glinted under her dresser – squinting, she realised that it was her comb, kicked there as she'd cleared up the glass from her tantrum that afternoon. She reached out, trying to levitate it to her, but only succeeded in wiggling it a little closer before it flopped over, refusing to budge.

She let her hand drop, pillowing her head on her other arm. Fine. It could stay there.

It wasn't like she was going to wear it ever again, anyways.

* * *

"Tough break?" Tony asked sympathetically without looking up from his tinkering. Loki grunted, tossing the phone onto the workbench and turning back to the robot that he was supposed to be fiddling with.

"What do you intend for me to do with this, again?" He eyed the mechanical arm with distaste, realising that he was supposed to be doing something with the bottle of motor oil, wrench, and rag. By the looks of Tony, he'd probably get pretty dirty doing whatever he was doing. Loki _hated _dirt.

"Undo that whatzit to oil the whozit, then you gotta play around with the thingamabob a little to find out why the arm is so slow, because for the life of me I can't figure out why."

Screwing up his mouth in distaste, Loki set to work. "What in the Nine Realms do you use this for?"

"Oh, you know, the usual." Tony waved his hand vaguely in the air, splattering oil all over the rest of the toolkit he had strewn around him. "Picking up after me, an extra arm because I only have two, bringing me coffee…"

"You can well afford servants to do all of that," Loki pointed out, forgoing using the wrench and undoing the whatzit with magic.

Tony shrugged. "People are assholes who might steal my ideas and shit. Robots are clean and easy. You just gotta polish them up once in a while. Fixing robots is a breeze. Handling people is a pain in the ass."

They lapsed into silence after that as Stark furiously sanded down some metal thing that already was gleaming. Loki sat, work forgotten, lost in thought.

* * *

_You __could__ be a little nicer to your dad, you know." Kate was pissed off because Loki had dissed Odin about practically nothing over dinner. _

"_He is _not _my father," Loki seethed. "And you have no right to tell me how or how not to address him." _

"_Dude, all he wanted to know was what you were doing with your free time. I could have answered him perfectly honestly – it's not like you're out there doing some deep, dark and crazy shit. How hard could it be to say 'yo, thanks for checking up on my life – I've been putting in hours in the training yard with Kate, popping down to Midgard to play chess and drink with the Man of Iron, and having a lot of mind-blowing sex at night.' Look! Done!" _

_Loki lost it entirely, backing her up against a wall before she knew what was happening. It wasn't one of those sexy, pre-fucking back-ups. Loki towered over her like an intimidating attacker and all her senses were wired to find an escape. He grabbed her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. "Don't you dare presume to dictate my relationship with the All-father, Katharine." He was snarling, pupils dilated and nostrils flaring. Kate had never felt more like a caged animal. "I have millennia of lies to come to terms with, and while I recognise that he is offering me olive branches, it is not in my nature to leap at goodwill and touchy-feely-family-hugs. Do you understand?" _

_Realising that she'd gone too far, Kate nodded, not trusting herself to speak. After a long, searching look, Loki released her face and enveloped her in his arms. Taken aback by his abrupt change in demeanour, she returned it after a beat, resting her hands gingerly on his back. _

"_I apologise for scaring you," he muttered into her shoulder. "The All-father seems to bring out the worst in me."_

_Kate relaxed in response to this and buried her face in his chest, trying to convey how sorry she was for pushing the issue. Only Loki could mend the rift between him and his father, and he'd get there in time without her trying to bridge the gap with her interference. _

_Loki pressed a kiss to the top of her head, letting the tension drain out of his body. "Now, Kate," he whispered, a note of mischief creeping into his tone. Kate raised her face up to him, eyebrow cocked. "You were saying something about mind-blowing sex?"_

* * *

"You're thinking about sex," Tony cut into his reverie knowingly, tapping the side of his nose.

Loki bared his teeth at him, irritated at him for distracting him just when he was about to recall the good part of that particular memory. "Much better sex than _you've_ ever had, I'm certain."

Tony flapped a hand in the direction of the door. "You're cranky. Take a nap or something. I'm pretty sure you're jetlagging."

Come to think of it, he _was _pretty sleepy. "I think I shall. See you at dinner, Tony."

Now elbow-deep in grease, Tony just made a strangled sound of acknowledgment as Loki strolled out of the lab and into the room he and Kate had turned into their own home-away-from-home. With a pang, he realised that it felt different without Kate there – it felt like that first time he'd come here after the Battle of New York, when he was bitter and lonely and the only friend he'd made only wanted his friendship when he ached for something more.

Sighing heavily, Loki flopped down on the bed, kicking off his boots. _Kate would shriek at me to take a shower before I sat on the bed_, he noted mentally. This whole room was one big reminder of her absence. Depressed, he rolled over onto his stomach, closing his eyes and trying to shut out his misery.

* * *

He knew immediately that it wasn't a dream.

He was back in the caves of the Other, the chiaturi and their monsters chittering just out of sight. Fear crawled up his spine as he realised that he was bound and gagged, with his head held in place by a noose that forced him to stay on his toes to avoid choking.

"You thought we were vanquished, Odinson?" the Other's voice slid like black oil over his skin, bleeding into his pores. "You thought to return as Asgardian royalty with a petty-witch wife in tow? You thought that you were free of us forever?"

Loki didn't answer; he tried to access his magic, but all he found was a void where the sum of his powers collected in his psyche. He then tried to wriggle his head out of the noose, but only succeeded in pulling it tighter. The Other chuckled at his efforts, and beckoned to a shadow that uncoiled from a mass in the darkness, slithering up his arm. A leaden weight settled in the pit of Loki's stomach. If that was what he thought it was –

– the shadowy creature leapt from its perch on the Other to wrap around Loki's neck.

With a strangled gasp, Loki felt the metallic tang of fear, pure and unadulterated, fill his nostrils and mouth. Through a blur of tears, he struggled as three hooded figures were roughly shoved to their knees before him.

The hood was ripped off the first. Loki couldn't even scream as the Other slit Frigga's throat. _It's not real_. He knew that the horrors playing out in front of him were only his nightmares given shape and form, but, crippled with fear, he couldn't summon the strength to break out of the shadow's hold.

The hood was ripped off the second figure. He locked eyes with Thor as the Other killed him, and he had to watch as life seeped out of his brother's bright, clear blue eyes. _It's not real_, he tried to tell himself. As if from a long way away, he heard himself screaming.

The hood was ripped off the third. Kate wailed and cried and begged as her head was wrenched back to make room for the Other's ugly, stained blade.

_Kate is not afraid of death. _

That realisation was enough to jolt him out of that existence.

* * *

He rolled out of bed, heart thudding madly in his chest as he raced down to the labs – Candyland, as Tony had dubbed them. Tony glanced up from his workbench, somehow even dirtier than before, thoroughly bewildered. "Slow down, Rock of Ages. Why are you only in your socks?"

Loki ignored him and went straight to Foster's equipment, booting it up and altering the instruments to feed data about seismic energy spikes – particularly about the one that had hit that morning.

With a sinking feeling, he discovered that the tremor that morning had been caused by a powerful burst of energy from an unknown source – and that energy was still lying dormant beneath the city.

The Other was back, and he had fear demons in his service.

He couldn't leave the city with this threat looming over it – Kate would just have to bring Ian here if she wanted him to train the boy. If she balked at taking her brother into the heart of danger – well. He'd be far safer here than he would unprotected somewhere else that the Other could reach (and once he discovered where Kate was, he would most certainly reach for her, regardless of the collateral damage inflicted). The Other would only want Kate, and if she left her family, they would be unmolested by his demons. It would be a bit more of a risk to take Ian with her, but he would be living in a house populated by some of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, all of whom would certainly die before letting harm come to a hair on his head.

He had no doubt that she would come to New York with Ian, because she too had understood that it was always calmest in the heart of the storm.

Aggravated, he slammed his fist into the table, leaving a dent that set Tony bitching about vandalism and finding durable worktables. Fuck the Other and his fucking demons. This was _not _how he wanted to be reunited with his wife.

* * *

**A/N: Thank you all _so much_ for your reviews! The Great Reveal will happen near the end, but the time frame for this story will be considerably shorter than that of _On Loan, _if that's of any comfort! (The entire story will be about 13 chapters long, though.)**

**Thanks to CharNinja LOL for letting me know that the part about Loki's experience with the Other was unclear! I've edited that part; hopefully it's better. Thor and Frigga didn't actually die; the demon only tapped into Loki's worst fears and played them out in front of him to torture him. **

**Let me know how you feel about this chapter! You guys have been the kindest people, ever.**

******Ian calls Kate _jie_ because that's short for _jie jie_ (姐姐), which is Mandarin for _older sister_. **


	4. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. All of this is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.**

* * *

Kate tossed her bags to the ground, disgruntled.

"You gave me this room _on purpose_," she growled, glaring at Pepper.

Pepper shrugged, looking as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. "I do everything on purpose."

"You know that we're done, and you gave me the room opposite _his _room _on purpose_." Kate was getting very agitated. A little unsure of what to do with an emotionally unstable Kate (because the Kate that she knew was _never _emotionally unstable), Pepper reached forward and enveloped her in a hug.

"Shh," she soothed, patting her back as Kate fought to keep her tears at bay. "You're going to have to deal with him eventually. Your marriage isn't even officially over – I'm not sure if they have the equivalent of divorce on Asgard, but as long as you're still together, you are going to have to find a way to handle what happened." Kate stiffened, and Pepper cursed herself inwardly, backpedalling. "If you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here, OK? Don't bottle everything up."

Kate took a shuddering breath, and pulled away, running her hands through her hair. "I'm doing fine," she rasped, but Pepper didn't buy it. Knowing better than to push, she just made her way to the door. "The SHIELD agent who escorted you and Ian on the flight told me that you'd like to be involved in the defence effort. The situation briefing is happening in an hour, in the conference room on the Candyland floor. I'm not sure what Ian will want to do when he's here and you're in meetings, but I have a number of options that I can run by you at dinner."

Pepper hesitated, eyeing Kate as she stood, shoulders slumped, staring at her hands. "Kate," she said gently, trying to get her to relax. Kate didn't even lift her head. "I'm very, very sorry."

There was no response, so Pepper bowed her head and left, shutting the door quietly behind her.

Forty-five minutes later, Kate was freshly showered and hunting for Ian. She found him in the living room, chatting animatedly with Clint. That surprised her – she hadn't known that _animated _was a setting in Clint's repertoire of emotions. Her brother looked up at her reproachfully as she approached. "You didn't tell me that you were friends with _Hawkeye_!"

Kate's blood ran cold. "I didn't tell you much about my life as a SHIELD agent, Squirt," she said carefully, waiting for Ian to look in another direction before scowling at Clint. The agent had the decency to look sheepish. There was a reason why she didn't talk about her life as a soldier. It wasn't a path that she wanted her little brother to follow.

Ian shrugged, not noticing his sister's irritation. "Well, Clint was telling me about your physical training schedules. All that combat and munitions training sounds super badass."

Kate didn't reply. She didn't feel it necessary to point out that they were basically being trained to kill people efficiently and effectively. That topic was a little too heavy for a Friday afternoon.

Clint, sensing her mood, stood hastily. "Anyways, Ian, Kate and I have a briefing right now, so we gotta split."

"Dinner's at seven thirty, but we'll probably be done by about then. You can take a nap – I know that you barely slept on the jet over here – or play some xBox or something. Pepper told me that she had one installed for you in your room. Just let Jarvis know if you need anything. Like, just ask him."

Ian nodded and threw his arms around his sister in a quick hug before ambling out of the room.

Kate huffed and turned to Clint. "I don't like him getting excited about SHIELD stuff."

"It's good to see you too, Kate."

"I'm serious. I don't want him doing this. I was barely older than he was when I joined and killed my first man. I don't want that blood on his hands."

Clint sighed, picking his bow off the coffee table and twanging the string. "I'm sorry, Kate. I didn't realise. He saw me chillin' out and asked me who I was and what I did, then he just kept asking."

"Discourage him," she ordered curtly, spinning on her heel and heading towards the elevator.

The ride down to Candyland was a little tense. By the time they got to the right floor, she was regretting being so harsh to Clint. Upon reflection, it really wasn't his fault that Ian was young and naïve and watched _way _too many Bond movies. So, she stopped him as he moved to get out of the elevator. "It _is _good to see you, Clint. Sorry I snapped at you. I just… yeah." She rubbed at her face with a hand, suddenly exhausted.

Clint's stoic expression softened, and he pulled Kate into a hug. _Seems like I'm everyone's new free hug bolster_, she thought sardonically, but she returned the warmth, because it was nice to hugged. "It'll be fine, Kate."

She didn't know if he was talking about how she and Loki were obviously no longer a couple, or Ian's dangerous dreamwalking, or the fact that the chiaturi were back and thirsty for revenge, but she just drew a shaky breath and made a sound of acknowledgment.

It would be ok. It had to be ok.

They entered the conference room beside Candyland to find that everyone was already gathered around the large, fancy-ass polished wood table. Loki caught her eye first – but he was so engrossed in his heated discussion about some area of science with Jane that he didn't notice her come in. That suited her just fine.

She slunk to the other side of the table, taking a seat beside Thor and hoping that his bulk would hide her from Loki's sight. Thor seemed to realise what she was doing, because he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Sister," he began, darting a look over to his brother. "How do you fare?"

"I am well," she told him agreeably, moving so that Thor continued to block her from Loki's view. Her issues were with Loki, not his brother. Thor was just like a gigantic teddy bear that didn't know what to do with his paws when confronted with a shelf of porcelain figurines.

"Sister, I am deeply sorry for –"

"Let us begin!" Loki was clearly exasperated as he threw a sheaf of papers down and directed Jane to her seat. The younger woman looked affronted at being sent away like a child, but clearly, her argument with Loki was getting nowhere.

"The chiaturi, led by the Other, are back." Loki's eyes swept round the table, pausing briefly when he spied Kate trying to make herself small. The rest pretended not to notice that small hiccup in his concentration as he carried on. "They have fear demons in their employ. The mass of energy below the city is a knot of negative energy, which is how Midgardian instruments register fear demons. It is certain that the Other will lead an assault on the city soon – the fact that he has made his first move by sending the demons here before the main army is an indicator of that. I don't know how they would open a portal from the void to Midgard," – here, Jane sniffed loudly – "but I believe that it is reasonable to expect their arrival within the fortnight."

Tony leaned back in his chair, thoughtful. "So, these fear demons. Isn't there a spell to get rid of them? _Riddikulus?_"

Loki actually recognised this reference, because Kate had made him read all seven of the Harry Potter books to her when she was laid up in bed after a mission that left her with three broken ribs, a broken leg, bruising around her throat and a gunshot wound to the hip (he had been _furious _with her, but that was another story altogether). He'd thought it was adorable that the ragtag underdogs with the annoyingly pure hearts won, but being an immortal god, kind of understood Voldemort's fascination with power and living forever.

Smoothly, he answered Tony's query. "A fear demon is not a boggart." Kate twitched in her chair, surprised that he'd remembered. "It is a very, very old entity that reaches into its victim's mind and traps him on the astral plane, confronting him with his worst nightmares in order to feed off his terror. They were banished by Odin All-father millennia ago, and the tomes on summoning and vanquishing them were all destroyed to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. It seems that the Other has found a way to reach into the pocket dimension in which they were imprisoned."

Steve frowned. "So are we just sitting ducks while the devil dances on our backs?"

Loki's expression, if possible, got even grimmer. "I am unable to find any information on these demons on Midgard. I will be travelling back to Asgard to confer with my mother and other magic users on the morrow. We need to move quickly. In the meantime, the best defence against a fear demon is your willpower. They only show you shadows of your fears; do not let them consume you. They will find it easiest to reach you in dreams, so the easiest way to escape is to wake." He was aware that he was making it sound far simpler than it was, but there really was no other way around it. He hated this vulnerability.

Realising that he had yet to discuss the matter of Ian with Kate, who was eyeing the grain of the wood table with interest, he decided to address the matter now, when everybody was around and she couldn't escape. "Katharine," – Kate flinched and grudgingly turned her attention to him – "I will run a battery of tests on Ian tonight after dinner."

Kate dipped her head and murmured a _thank you_.

"That will be all."

With a flurry of movement, the Avengers eased out of their chairs and gathered their things – except for Kate, who bolted out of her chair, and, having not brought anything to the meeting, was the first one out the door.

He was ready to leap over the table to catch her before she zoomed into the lift and locked herself in her room (which he could circumvent, but that probably wouldn't go down very well with her), but he was waylaid by a very determined astrophysicist who had very different ideas on how the chiaturi could, scientifically, breach the barriers between worlds.

He watched Kate go with a flare of annoyance. There was only so much avoidance that a man could take. They had to talk.

* * *

He cornered her after dinner, grabbing her wrist and yanking her into a bathroom off the dining room and locking the door behind him. Kate tamped down a shriek of surprise; knowing that there wasn't any way out of there except through Loki, she hopped up on the countertop and looked steadfastly at the mosaic pattern on the opposite wall.

"You're going to have to speak to me sooner or later, Kate. You cannot carry on ignoring me forever. We're still married, and," he hesitated, gauging her reaction, "I love you."

Kate's only response was to slide her arms around her belly, as if she was trying to physically keep herself together.

The sight broke his heart.

He moved to touch her, but she shied away, tightening her hold on herself. Stung, Loki backed away, fingers clenching into a white-knuckled fist. "You weren't there when I needed you to be," she eventually whispered. "It was like nothing mattered – like," – here, she struggled to carry on breathing – "everything never mattered. You didn't even grieve."

Loki was towering before her in a heartbeat. "How _dare _you say I didn't-"

"Didn't I beg you to stay?" She locked eyes with him; a part of him registered that they were close enough to kiss. She looked as if the mere thought of what she was alluding to was too crushing a memory to touch.

Loki froze as a dark, suffocating sadness welled up in his throat.

"I'm not ready to discuss it, Loki." She slid under his arm and unlocked the bathroom door. "I appreciate what you're doing for Ian, but I'm not prepared to talk about us."

"I'm helping him for _you_," he heard himself confess through numb lips.

Kate paused, back to him. "Thank you." And then she left.

* * *

Loki sat Ian down in the latter's room twenty minutes later. Kate was observing the proceedings from an armchair a little way away from them; Ian had picked up on the tension between them and had seated himself between them as a buffer, but it really wasn't helping much. With a sigh, Loki gestured to Ian to sit back in his armchair.

"I am going to move to your mind very slowly, so just breathe and try not to panic."

Ian leaned back and tried to unfurrow his brow. Loki simultaneously shifted forward and touched his mind to the boy's.

Upon feeling Loki's mind – like an alien finger upon a windowpane – Ian forgot to breathe and started to panic.

Reversing the connection, he leapt into Loki's mind.

He found himself in a huge, darkened bedroom that was a complete mess. Books were strewn over the floor, old wax candles had fallen from a huge, unlit chandelier, furniture was overturned, and clothes – _gowns_, Ian noted, _silk dresses like those Kate wore _– were tossed about like broken dolls. A terrible noise caught his attention: to his horror, Loki was curled up in the embrace of a shadow, wild-haired and sobbing. He seemed to be clutching something in his fist, but Ian couldn't see what it was.

Appalled at the sight of his cool, collected brother-in-law in such a state, Ian backed away. He must have made a sound, or kicked one of the books on the floor, because Loki abruptly stiffened and looked up.

Their eyes met, and Ian was unceremoniously thrown from Loki's memory.

The entire episode had last about three seconds, but it had felt much longer to both Loki and Ian as the connection broke and Ian rocked back into his body. Without another word, Loki fled the room as Ian started to shake.

Kate, who'd been on the edge of her seat since Loki had entered the room, almost tripped in her haste to get to her brother. Trying to quell her own bubbling anxiety, she tried to calm him down as he hyperventilated. Her own mind was racing – what the _fuck _had happened?

It took a long while, but she finally had Ian calm and tucked into bed. Exhausted, she smoothed a lock of hair out of his face, wishing that he'd never been touched with mutation. He was taller than she was, and broader and probably physically stronger, but he would always be her chubby little brother, demanding that she make airplanes fly. She remembered when he'd been so excited about the possibility of having powers – her mouth twisted wryly – but that was an age ago. With a gentle kiss to his forehead that he would have probably squirmed away from if he'd been awake, she left his room, rubbing her eyes wearily.

Loki, who had been slumped against her door, straightened hastily as she approached. "I'm sorry for running out on Ian," he offered, without preamble. "It will not happen again. He's far stronger than I had realised."

"What the fuck _happened_?" Kate hissed, all tiredness forgotten at the sight of her husband. "You said you'd _help _him, not freak him out!"

The lines around Loki's eyes tightened. "It will not happen again," he repeated, scrubbing at his face with his hand.

"No! You can't just brush it off when my brother was freaking out in there!"

She'd almost forgotten how fast Loki moved. She jerked away as she sensed rather than saw him come towards her, but his arms were longer. She yelped as his fingers dug into her upper arms and he brought his face an inch from hers. "I thought that the one thing you learnt from our marriage was how to let things go."

That was unfair. He knew it was unfair of him; Kate recoiled from him, hurt and indignation flashing in her eyes. He released her, unable to stand the look on her face, and slipped into his room. The sound of the lock sliding into place echoed loudly through the empty corridor, reverberating in Kate's ears.

She waited until she was back in her own room before she sank down onto the floor and buried her head in her hands.

Throughout that entire exchange, she had been acutely aware of the light glinting off the gold band that he still wore on the third finger of his left hand.

* * *

The Other was waiting for Loki in his dreams.

He was in the Bifrost – the old one that Thor had destroyed. The golden dome glittered with light reflected off the open portal, and with a jolt of dread, he realised that he was watching himself in his attempt to destroy Jötunheimr.

The Other drifted up behind him as he stood mesmerised by the anguish and cruelty etched into his past self's bearing, and casually laid a rough, clammy hand on the back of his neck.

Blue flushed through his body and red bled into his eyes, but as he transformed into his Jötun form, he felt a growing panic creep into his body with the incursion of colour. By the time he was fully Jötun, he was curled up on the floor, reduced to a cowering, sobbing mess.

"Is it not beautiful, the fear of millions?" the Other gestured admiringly at past-Loki as he endeavoured to murder a race. "Is it not glorious, to have the fear of those you killed embedded into your bones?"

Loki could barely breathe through his regret and pain. Through a haze of agony, he registered the Other stepping around his body to stop in front of his face. "You will know _true _pain," the monster promised.

Then he heard, rather than felt, the bones in his face cracking in the wake of the Other's boot.

Loki shot up in bed, fingers tracing his cheekbones, nose, jaw, just to reassure himself that they were whole. Shaking and blind with the aftershocks of fear, he groped for the comforting warmth of Kate before remembering that _she wasn't there_.

Loki clutched at the cold sheets and _cried_. His hands were red with the blood of thousands of souls, he'd lost his wife, and he'd lost – he'd lost _so much_. A weaker man would have gone mad with grief and remorse, but whatever he may be, Loki was not weak. At least, that's what he whispered fiercely to himself as he tried to staunch memories that were easier left unremembered.

Eventually, he swiped an arm across his eyes, went through the routine of washing up and clearing all signs of distress from his person, dressed in his black, gold and green armour, and teleported himself to Asgard. He had to seek counsel _immediately_.

The Other was getting closer. There was no room for delay.

* * *

**A/N: This was a pretty problematic chapter for me; I hope that it turned out OK, and that it isn't confusing. Let me know what you think, and I'll revise anything that requires revision. **

**Thank you, reviewers/favouriters/followers! It's really encouraging to receive a notification from Fanfiction when I'm swamped with drafting letters and research memos. Y'all are the **_**best.**_


	5. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. All of this is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.**

* * *

_The prince's whore sleeps like the dead._

A shadow crept across the room, slithering away from where the curtains parted to allow chinks of city light into the darkened space. Kate lay across the bed where she'd collapsed, too tired to cry. With a gentle caress, the fear demon slid into the shadows created by the wave of Kate's hair across her face, sinking into her dreams.

Kate was dreaming a memory.

She was on holiday with Loki in Iceland, because she had wanted to see glaciers and volcanoes and take lots of pictures of Loki stomping around in the snow. He obliged, for the most part, and she already had an entire folder on her laptop full of photographs of a grumpy Loki against the backdrop of immensely gorgeous landscapes.

But, when they were making a visit up to see the Northern Lights, Kate left her camera in her suitcase. "I don't want to see them through a lens," she had explained, when Loki conveyed his surprise (and relief at not having to awkwardly stand around as Kate yelled at him to _smile, dumbass_). "The real thing is more HD than a camera could express."

By some stroke of magic, they were the only ones out to view the lights that night. Kate had a sneaking suspicion that everyone else who'd intended to come had suddenly remembered very urgent things that they had to do elsewhere, but she wasn't too cut up about Loki's meddling in the lives of other people when it came to things like this. She hated crowds.

As she tipped her head up, awed by the shifting ribbons of multi-coloured light, she realised that they were slowly being woven into a pattern. A quick glance at Loki showed that he was silently conducting the dance above them. Anticipation warmed her from her chest to her toes – was this actually _happening_?

The woven lights were now dancing merrily in a circle of twisting colours. Satisfied, Loki beckoned to it, and before Kate knew what he was doing, knelt in the snow, an intricate, white gold ring studded with winking emeralds in his palm. Kate thought that she was going to pass out from excitement and joy.

"Yes!"

Loki smirked up at her. "I have not asked anything of you."

Kate huffed, yanking off her glove. "Aren't you asking me to marry you?"

"Well, I have yet to, actually…"

Wriggling her fingers at him, Kate shrugged. "Right, then. Loki, will _you_ marry me?"

"You are incorrigible," he laughed, sliding the ring onto her finger.

_This is when he swings me around and builds an igloo and makes love to me under the lights_, her memory supplied, but her dream had other ideas.

As soon as the ring was on her finger, the mirth in Loki's eyes died out. The twisting metal gleamed and crept upwards, vines of precious metal snaking around her body like a hungry serpent. Kate watched Loki watch her as she suffocated, her struggling no match for the metal.

_It doesn't happen like this_, she cried, wearing her wrists bloody as she strained against the bindings. But, inexorably, the vines curled around her throat. Kate managed one last, choking cough before she lapsed into unconsciousness –

* * *

– And woke, sweating, in her own bed.

Kate kicked the covers off her, rubbing at her neck. It felt a little warm, but she was pretty agitated, so it could just be that. A quick glance at the clock told her that it was already seven-thirty in the morning, so she'd been asleep a lot longer than she felt.

Deciding against a lie-in, Kate rolled out of bed, made a quick pit stop in the bathroom, threw on a robe, and padded to the kitchen.

She found Pepper, who was immaculately dressed in a white skirt suit, drinking coffee while reading the papers. Feeling a little inadequate, she curled her toes in her fluffy pink slippers and mumbled a muted _good morning_, hunting for a mug for the coffee machine.

"Jarvis told me that Loki disappeared from his room in the middle of the night," Pepper said conversationally.

Kate flinched in the act of turning the coffee machine on, as if hearing her husband's name was like a slap on her wrist. "He probably just zoomed off to Asgard." Flipping the switch, she studied the options critically, ignoring the hollowness that carved its way through her chest upon recalling the night before.

Pepper, wisely, changed the subject. "Nat wanted to talk to you, yesterday, after the briefing, but she said you ran off."

Kate shifted her weight as she waited for the machine to splutter to life. "I couldn't stay in the room," she admitted, running a hand through her hair nervously. "I'll meet her another time."

"Or you could meet her today. Darcy's in town, and she wants a big ol' girl gang meet-up."

Coffee was finally pouring into the tiny macchiato cup that seemed to be the only thing resembling a mug that she could find. Kate took a greedy sip, burning her tongue, before feeling awake enough to participate in what looked to be shaping up to an actual conversation. "I thought she was in Washington, doing actual political science things instead of science-science things."

She could hear the shrug in Pepper's voice. "Well, she's back today, and she wants to see us. I told her that we'd meet her for lunch at twelve. Nat and Jane will be there, too."

Kate hesitated. She didn't want to leave Ian alone, especially after last night. Pepper seemed to sense her indecision, because she stood up and put an arm around Kate. It was a little awkward, because Pepper was naturally way taller than Kate, and she was currently in heels to match her suit, but it was heartfelt all the same. "Ian is fifteen," Pepper reminded her. "He doesn't need a babysitter. Knowing him, he'll probably stay in all day to play video games. Tony's almost 50 and he would still do that if I let him. Stop worrying."

Kate sighed, putting her coffee down. "I suppose I could have a day out."

"Yes, you could. It'll be fun. You need to know that it's OK to have fun." Pepper briefly held her breath, waiting for a sort of reaction from Kate, but nothing came. Exhaling, she continued on. "And you could laugh again. Darcy always makes you laugh. When was the last time you laughed?"

Kate knew exactly when the last time she laughed was. It was about four months ago, on the afternoon of the day that she refused to think about, before everything was shot to dust. "I'll think about it," she mumbled, picking up her coffee again.

Pepper figured that this was probably as good as she'd get. Putting her used cup in the sink, she turned back to the table, gathering up her files and tablet. "We're going to that shawarma restaurant that Tony likes. Dress up cute and be in the lobby by eleven forty-five." She bustled out of the room in a flurry of clicking heels and CEO chic, leaving Kate with half a cup of cooling coffee and bitter reminder of when her laughter came as easily as breath in her lungs.

* * *

Loki was, uncharacteristically, falling asleep during a meeting that he had convened.

After arriving on Asgard in the dead of the night, he'd crashed out on his bed, trusting that the palace's ancient wards would be enough to stave the fear demons and the chiaturi off. He'd been right – the Other had not made any appearances in his dreams. However, being alone in a _bed_ that he and Kate had once shared, in the _apartments_ that he and Kate had once shared, wreaked havoc on his sleep quality. He rose at dawn, restless and heartsick. He let himself into their walk-in closet that Kate had indulged in by decorating it in the Midgardian manner – no chests of clothes for her when she could have her dresses hung from racks like oversized, alien spices – and lay down on the thick shag rug that she'd thrown in the middle of it. He'd lost count of the number of times that they'd made love on this rug, distracted by each other as they dressed and undressed. He remained there, spread-eagled, for an hour, breathing in her fading scent of vanilla and jasmine and listening for the ghosts of her laughter, until a knock on the main door to their rooms roused him from his thoughts.

His mother was already aware of his presence in the palace (_because mothers know __everything_, she'd once assured him), and had sent for him to have breakfast with her in her chambers.

From then on, he'd been shut in a room with ten of Asgard's most noteworthy magic users – all of whom were women and most of whom exceedingly long-winded – trying to keep his eyes open as they debated theoretical possibilities behind the emergence of the demons but touched very little on how they could be protected against. After this meeting, the only person whom Loki could ever conceive himself being civil towards _ever again _was Sigyn, whose only contribution had been to coolly wish everyone a good morning before proceeding to silently file her nails with magic in a corner.

He'd finally had enough. "Be _quiet_!" he snarled, shoving his chair back violently. Eight women glared back at him (excluding his mother, who looked rather relieved at the interruption, and Sigyn, who continued admiring herself in her thumbnail, which had been buffed and polished to a mirror-shine). One particularly naggy crone opened her mouth to express how indignant she was, but Loki magicked it shut. He'd probably offended someone immensely influential, but he really couldn't give a flying fuck about that. "I need protection for the city of New York – including Stark Tower. You can blather on about how impossible it is to reach around a pocket dimension and extract nightmarish entities when I have departed, but for now, _I need counsel on how to fend the creatures off_."

Then he flopped back down in his seat and gave everyone the stink-eye until an elderly, frazzled charmsworker raised her hand tentatively. Loki rounded on her, nostrils flared.

"If, I may, please, Your Highness-" if Loki were any other man, he would have softened in the face of such nervousness from a lady old enough to be his grandmother, but Loki was, occasionally, a dipshit. Now was one of those times. She quailed under his irritation, and tried again. "Your Highness, um, I have a charm that will, um, filter negative energies away from dreams. It, um, is unfortunately made to protect only one sleeper at a time, unless its powers are, um, augmented, and I have not the time to make any more of them so as to give each individual his own."

Seeing that her son was ready to rip poor goodwoman Ásleif from limb to limb if she wasn't going to be more helpful, Frigga intervened, deciding that her appreciation of her younger son's ability to cut through bullshit had to be balanced against the fact that Hel hath no fury like a woman scorned. "I will be able to provide you with a means to channel and augment the powers of the charm, Ásleif, but I am afraid that I will not be able to carry on fuelling it from Asgard, and more power than that provided by His Highness is required for its reflection to blanket a city. As duties prevent me from travelling to Midgard, perhaps the Lady Sigyn, most versed in mirror-art, may accompany His Highness to Midgard in order to maintain the charm."

Sigyn finally looked up, bored. "Do I leave today?"

"Yes. Now," Loki snapped. "Pack. Goodwoman Ásleif, Mother, the charm, if you please."

Sigyn rose fluidly and left the chamber without a backward glance, and as he watched her go from the corner of his eye, Loki was extremely thankful that his romance with her had fizzled out centuries before. She was certainly more conventionally beautiful than Kate, but in all the nine realms, one would be hard-pressed to find someone more self-absorbed.

But he had not come to pat himself on the back for dodging a bullet. Turning back to his mother and Ásleif, he knuckled down to obtaining instructions on how to work the complicated web of charms that would, hopefully, prove their salvation against the Other.

* * *

"C'mon, Jie, stop fussing. I'll be _fine_."

Kate was fully aware that she was smothering her brother as she perched anxiously on the edge of his bed. Unlike her, Ian had no qualms about lying in bed until noon (which was exactly what he was intending to do), following which he would happily laze around Stark Tower, playing video games or going to the gym. Kate suspected that he was keen on going to the gym just so that he could catch one of the Avengers training, but she'd decided to just let his interest play out. It's not like she could actually order him away from pursuing a life of guts and glory – especially since at fifteen, he was more fixated on glory than guts.

Ian was still talking. "Leave me here to roll. Go out with your friends and take lots of selfies to post on Instagram. Try to recreate the Oscars selfie with them. I betcha you'll get more likes than Ellen."

Kate pursed her lips. She actually didn't know what her brother was talking about, because she'd probably been in Asgard, which didn't have access to Midgardian gossip columns, but she assumed that Ian was commanding her to go out and be frivolous. It was a foreign concept to her, now, but she'd promised herself that she'd try.

But before that…

"Ian, Squirt; what happened last night?"

Like flicking on a switch, Ian's expression changed from jovial to serious. "I, um. I accidentally jumped into Loki's brain." The memory of Loki, crumpled and distraught, pushed to the forefront of his mind. Scrutinising his sister in the bright glare of the morning light (upon bursting into his room, she'd unceremoniously drawn the curtains and started warbling _good morning, good morning, good morning to you_), he realised that while he'd noted that she'd lost weight upon coming home, he hadn't realised the extent of the loss – she'd always been slight, but now she was _gaunt_; her collarbones were painfully prominent, and her cheeks looked like they had been hollowed out with a dessert spoon. Her hair was ragged and wispy, and he'd noticed that strands kept coming away in her hands when she ran them through her hair – which was a new nervous habit that she'd never had before. Whatever had happened between Loki and her, it had made her wildly unhappy – and from what he'd seen last night, Loki was equally cut up about the whole thing.

Hesitantly, Ian reached for his sister's hands in a gesture of comfort. "I think I saw a memory of him after you left," he told her gently. "He was... broken. Like all the light in his life had been stripped from him."

There was a pregnant pause before Kate ripped herself from her brother and paced towards the door without looking back. "I'll be back for dinner. Call takeout for lunch and put it on Stark's tab. Love you."

And then she was gone.

Ian sighed, leaning back against his pillows and throwing an arm over his eyes. He didn't need to be able to read minds to know that his sister was sprinting away from a very serious problem, and he had a bad feeling that she was running out of road.

* * *

**A/N: This is a pretty brief chapter, but I hope that y'all like it! Let me know what you think. **


	6. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. This is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.**

* * *

Pepper pursed her lips as Kate brisk-walked into the lobby at eleven fifty-five, ten minutes late. "I told you to dress cute," she admonished, eyeing her bare face, oversized white tee (which was not oversized in a fashionable way) and faded jeans that were definitely a size too large. "You look homeless."

Kate shrugged. She'd never been too concerned about her appearance, and when she was packing for this trip, she'd just thrown whatever clothes were closest to her into her pink suitcase without folding them first before viciously slamming the case shut. "You're the one that the paparazzi want to photograph, Pep. You and Jane. No one from any gossip magazine will give a fuck about what I wear because I'll just be your 'female friend'. Where _is_ Jane, by the way?"

Giving up, Pepper smoothed out her silk top and beckoned to the doorman to call the driver around. Kate narrowed her eyes at her ensemble, wondering when she'd had time to change out of the skirt suit she'd been in when she _knew _that she'd had back-to-back meetings from seven-thirty in the morning till eleven forty.

Pepper's perfectly structured life would always remain a mystery to Kate.

"Jane went to pick Darcy up from the airport and took her to the apartment that she keeps in the city. It's kind of a mess, because Darcy's not exactly Martha Stewart, but she refuses to stay with us when she has her own place." Pepper smiled at the doorman as he helped her to slide gracefully into the backseat of Stark's souped-up Pepper Protector (he'd been so paranoid that someone would try to attack her to get to him that he'd outfitted a previously nondescript sedan with enough tech to take down a nuclear state – it was still pretty nondescript on the outside, but sitting in it felt like being inside an armoured egg). Kate stomped around to the other side of the door, ignoring the other doorman who waited there, and opened her door herself, throwing herself onto the plush leather and slamming the door shut. Pepper getting all dressed up meant that they would be going shopping at some fancy-ass departmental store, and she didn't feel like prancing around trying on things that she would never, ever wear.

It's not like she'd willingly leave the house again for the rest of her very long life.

The ride to the shawarma place was _painful_. It being downtown New York, Kate couldn't ignore the loud, flashing billboards outside her window. Every advertisement for a baby product – even a poster for the children's section at Zara – made her want to burst into tears. Pepper soon realised her emotional turmoil and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Darcy and Nat don't know," Kate rasped. "Please don't tell them. I can't bear the way they'll look at me." Pepper squeezed her shoulder in understanding.

Jane knew, but they hadn't managed to interact much since Kate had arrived (Jane had taken to sleeping and eating in the lab), and she hadn't tried to get Kate alone to talk to her – for which Kate was grateful. Thor had probably told her not to mention it. Good guy Thor.

Pepper slid her arm around Kate and held her until they got to the restaurant. Taking a fortifying breath, Kate thanked Pepper quietly for being there, and exited the car, turning her face away to compose herself.

She could deal with this. She could totally deal with this. If she could walk into the fire demons' den on a suicide mission and come out of it immortal, she could deal with a girls' day out. Right?

She was still breathing in and out deeply in an effort to pull herself together when a dark-haired blur slammed into her, knocking her back several paces before she lost her balance completely and landed on her ass in what she hoped wasn't gum.

"OH MY GOD! MY OWN PERSONAL GOD! HEYYYYYYYYYYY KATIE! DID IT HURT WHEN YOU FELL FROM HEAVEN?"

Winded, Kate huffed a strand of hair out of her face as Darcy sat back on her heels, looking inordinately pleased with herself and her greeting. "Darce," she croaked. "You got even _weirder_. And I'm not a god. I told you this. Multiple times. And Asgard isn't heaven."

Darcy's grin widened and she leapt up, reaching down to haul Kate to her feet. With a sinking feeling, she felt something sticky and mushy pull from the right ass-cheek of her jeans as she rose from the pavement. It had been gum. And it had been newly discarded. Fantastic.

Oblivious, Darcy looped an arm around Kate's neck and slung another around Pepper, who'd rushed over to see why Kate had disappeared from view with a shriek. "I've missed you guys so much! Politicians are _way _more _boring_ than scientists; did you know that? And they aren't half as hot as aliens. I've been stuck in an office all day doing research shit and trying not to get caught napping under my desk. Which is kind of what I did for Jane anyways, but Jane never cared if I napped, whether it was on my desk or under it. Anyways. Enough about me! LET'S HEAR ABOUT YOU!"

_Clearly_, Kate thought as they were manoeuvred into the restaurant, _Washington hadn't been diligent in letting Darcy out enough_. She had a strong suspicion that Darcy hadn't been allowed to run wild and free and be all _yo, I'm Darcy Lewd-is_, and that she was determined to make up for all lost opportunities for speech within the last ten months in the space of an afternoon.

Jane and Nat were already inside, sipping on iced water. Darcy dragged Pepper and Kate over to them, shoving them down onto empty seats before taking her own spot beside Jane.

"Sorry; when she saw your car pull up, she was out of her chair before we could stop her," Jane whispered to Pepper. Kate was still uncomfortably aware of the patch of gum on her jeans that had sealed her ass to the chair. Nat was eyeing her, amused. Deciding that the gum could be scraped off another time, she turned her attention to her old friend.

"Hey, Nat. I'm sorry I couldn't stop to chat after the meeting yesterday. I had, err. Something on."

Nat knew that she was lying, but she didn't call her out on it. God bless Russia. "It's fine," she said, waving her hand about in a dismissal. "How long will you be here for?"

Kate hesitated. "Err. Well, I'll be in New York until Ian learns to close his mind properly and isn't wandering into other people's heads. After that, I'll probably go back home to Singapore."

Darcy's ears pricked forward like a horse. "Singapore? Is Loki going with you?"

A knot of anxiety began to form in the pit of her stomach. "No."

Darcy frowned, oblivious to Jane's frantic eye-messages. "Why? Dude, the last time I saw you guys, you were hoisted up on Stark's kitchen counter- OW! _Fuck_!"

Nat leaned back, satisfied with her work. Glaring at the ex-assassin, Darcy reached down to rub her ankle – which would most certainly bruise – but froze when she saw Kate's face. It was drawn tight with stress and misery, the latter an emotion that looked completely foreign on her friend's face.

Suddenly understanding that a great deal had changed since the last time she'd been in town, Darcy sat slowly back up as Pepper called for more menus in a cheerful voice that fooled no one. Kate still looked as if she was going to have a panic attack.

With a sudden jerk, she shoved away from the table. "I'm going to scrape gum off my jeans. Pep, order for me, please?"

And then she was pushing her way through the crowded restaurant. There was a brief heartbeat of silence before Jane was out of her seat as well, hurrying after Kate.

Darcy made to stand, but Nat yanked her back down. "Not now," she warned. She didn't know the full story, but she knew that something seriously bad had happened to push Kate and Loki apart – she'd managed to get _that_ much out of Pepper after observing Kate's behaviour at the meeting. Kate would open up in her own time, but all they could do now was wait for her to realise that she needed help dealing with her issues.

Jane wove through waiters and seedy-looking diners, managing to lunge forward and grab Kate just before she could barricade herself into a cubicle. "_Kate_."

Kate tried to wrench her arm away, but Jane held fast. _Fuck_.

"Kate, you and Loki should be handling this together. No one else would understand like him; if you just shared the burden, maybe it would be better."

"You weren't _there_!" Kate snarled, rounding on the other woman. "You don't get it. Loki _left _me. I was empty and weeping and broken and he said that we should have never fallen in love, and then he _left_." She couldn't quite stop the desperate sadness that had taken up residence under her heart from creeping into her voice.

"He loves you," Jane said softly, releasing her grip on Kate. "So much. You should see the way he looks at you when he thinks that no one else is watching. It's heartbreaking. The both of you are heartbreaking."

Kate looked down; Jane followed her gaze and noticed, to her alarm, that her friend's hands were trembling. "Go back to the table, Jane. I'll be there in a moment and we'll talk about Darcy and go shopping, but no more talk of me. Ok? I can't. I can't do this."

Mouth pressed into a thin line, Jane obliged, turning round just as the washroom door slammed shut. Wincing, she made her way back to the table, plonking down into her seat wearily and shaking her head at Pepper. A heavy silence descended and didn't lift until Nat spied Kate coming back and nudged Darcy, prompting her to start babbling about Washington.

Kate smiled, laughed, and ribbed Darcy about toppling her onto gum, and the others just followed her lead. They eventually got into the natural swing of conversation, but they did not discuss Loki, and Pepper and Jane kept Kate's attention away from all billboards and advertisements featuring children.

* * *

Darcy had bullied Kate into changing into a new sundress that she'd also bullied her into buying ("... there's old gum on your ass anyways!") and Pepper had insisted on a full mani-pedi-haircut-blowout pampering session, because she claimed that it was relaxing. It was, and Kate was thankful for the kindness of being able to sit back and not think while people massaged her feet and arms and scalp.

Surveying her appearance in the elevator mirrors as they zoomed up to the living quarters for dinner, Kate had to admit that she still looked pretty haggard, but at least she didn't give off a homeless vibe any more.

With a ding, the elevator doors opened and the girls spilled out into the living room, tossing their bags into a corner and tumbling onto the couches, exhausted from a very fruitful day of shopping.

Something gleamed out on the terrace, catching Kate's eye. Curious, she slid the glass doors aside and stepped out into the night, circling a strange contraption mounted on an easel – it was a sort of dreamcatcher, laid against a huge, highly polished plate glass mirror that seemed to catch the colours of the sunset and magnify them before reflecting them back out through the screen of the dreamcatcher.

It was beautiful, but the longer she stood there and watched the shifting lights in the mirror, the tighter she felt in the chest.

Sigyn was here.

Sure enough, she heard a small commotion inside as new arrivals turned up, so she reluctantly stepped back in to take part in the meet-and-greet. She'd have to do it eventually.

She saw Loki, first. He was still in his Asgardian attire, and cut a striking figure in profile as he introduced the woman beside him to her friends. Sigyn moved forward to shake Jane's hand, and Kate felt irrationally strong dislike sweep through her.

Sigyn was the kind of drop-dead gorgeous that editors would _kill _to get on the covers of their magazines; Hefner would probably give his fortune and swear to celibacy just to take a picture of her naked. She was tall, redheaded, voluptuous, and looked amazing in princess gowns. But, while Kate was self-aware enough to chalk about sixty percent of her issues with Sigyn down to insecurity, she also felt irrationally _uncomfortable _around the woman. She reminded her of this guy she knew in junior college who would be friends with everyone just to use them for his own means. He'd been a very charming snake, but he'd been a snake all the same. Sigyn gave her the same vibe, and it made her exceedingly wary. She'd never told Loki about her feelings, though. He'd only think that she was being jealous, and while she _was_ pretty jealous, it would be lame if he accused her of being so. It was unnecessary and she didn't want to get into it.

Realising that she was standing in the doorway like a buffoon, she slid the glass doors shut with a thud, drawing attention from the rest, and floated over to the group. She ignored Loki and nodded curtly to Sigyn, wondering if the other woman would curtsey to her here, as she would have to in Asgard. A loaded heartbeat passed as Sigyn wavered, trying to decide whether court etiquette was required in this setting, before she stepped back and sank into a deep curtsey.

Loki narrowed his eyes at Kate, sensing the tension in her posture, but his wife's expression was coolly impassive. It seemed that she'd picked up more than combat skills from the Widow over the years.

Darcy seemed pretty taken aback at the fact that people _curtseyed _to Kate – the rest, except for Jane, perhaps, had forgotten that she'd become a princess, and Asgardians took that sort of shit pretty seriously.

Kate casually gestured for Sigyn to rise before addressing her. "Lady Sigyn. What brings you to Midgard?" _Apart from my husband_, a vicious, bitter voice piped up in the back of her skull. Annoyed, she crushed the thought; Loki and her weren't an item, and he could hang out with any viper he wanted._  
_

"I have come to lend my power to the protection charm against the fear demons, Your Highness. I believe you would have seen both the charm and my contribution outside."

Kate smiled politely. "I did. Your mirror magic is as entrancing as always."

Darcy clearly couldn't handle the amount of courtesy bullshit in the room and had just opened her mouth to say something potentially embarrassing to lighten the mood when Stark burst in, leading a squad of males (namely Thor, Clint, Rogers, Banner, Ian) bearing pizza. With a manly roar, he charged out of sight down the corridor that led to the dining area. Rogers looked embarrassed at such undignified behaviour, and Banner looked pretty put out at all the roaring and charging (considering the amount of roaring and charging that he does when he hulks out), but Thor, Ian and Clint were all-out stampeding down the hallway, boxes of pizza and chicken wings held aloft. Sheepishly, Rogers jerked his head towards the thundering war-whoops. "Dinner's here."

Pepper, ever the gracious host, leapt up, beaming. "Shall we?"

Loki was thoroughly unfazed by the raucous display, but Kate was smugly satisfied at Sigyn's obvious discomfiture at the sight of the greasy pizza boxes. She'd bet her left arm that in all her centuries of existence, the woman had never eaten anything as banal as dough topped with cheese and mystery meat off a plastic plate with her hands. Linking arms with Darcy, she was about to skip gleefully off to where the pizza was when Loki laid a hand on her arm. Kate felt her heart still as the level of awkward in the room went up about ten notches.

Darcy pulled away and everybody was suddenly very interested in heading to the dining room. Jane just about grabbed Sigyn and frogmarched her away when the woman didn't seem inclined to move.

Loki spoke before Kate could unfreeze herself to wrench away. "I will meet with Ian tonight, after dinner, if you are agreeable."

Kate nodded stiffly. "I'll be sitting in again, so you can just come by his room when you're ready. I'll be there."

Loki wanted to claw his eyes out at how stilted their conversation had become. Sighing, he removed his hand from her person and rubbed his eyes. "You look nice in that dress," he began to say, but she'd fled as soon as she was free from his touch.

Frustrated, Loki stomped down the hall to where dinner was starting without him. Dinner with her on the other side of the table, pretending that he didn't exist. He already _knew _that it was going to be horrible. _Well_, he thought, as Kate slid into a seat beside Darcy, a smile already painted on her face, _at least I have the opportunity to watch Sigyn eat pizza. That isn't something you see every century_.

* * *

**A/N: Hello! This is, again, a pretty brief chapter (and a filler one), but all the action will be coming up in the next few chapters. Everything's going to happen on this night, so things will be picking up from now on. Reviews are always appreciated!**

**Junior College: What Singapore calls the last two years of High School.**


	7. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. This is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk. **

* * *

As soon as dinner was over, Sigyn pleaded exhaustion and retired to the guest room that had been made up for her. Ian and Kate remained in the kitchen a while longer, washing plates and chatting to Thor and Tony about their day. Ian had, predictably, lazed around in his room for a couple of hours before heading down to the gym to run a couple of miles and do some weights. Tony thought it was a laugh that his abilities were so subtle in nature – Ian was as tall as Kate was small, and broad and tanned from playing rugby and water polo. He just didn't look like someone who could traipse through dreams; even Thor thought that his abilities would be more aggressive in nature.

Loki lounged at the bar, glass of scotch in hand, staring moodily out over the city. He barely noticed that someone had settled into the seat beside him until that someone moved into his line of vision and lifted the glass from his fingers. He rounded on the interloper, indignant, only to lock eyes with the inscrutable Black Widow.

Nat had always been fiercely protective of Kate. Back when Loki had been new to Midgard and reluctantly falling in love with the irrepressible mutant, it was the Widow who'd placed herself between them and warned him away. Not that he ever listened to her, but he respected her loyalty and concern for her friend. It took a lot of courage to stand in the way of a god, even one disgraced and powerless. He could have snapped her spine like a twig without a second thought, and they had both known it. Although years passed since that initial dislike and she eventually served as maid-of-honour at his and Kate's wedding, they hadn't become friends the way he and Tony had. He had a feeling that she was just waiting for him to trip up so that she had an excuse to have him booted off Midgard forever.

Now was probably her chance. He waited, scowling, for her to say something. When she didn't, he lost his temper. "_What?_"

Instead of answering immediately, Nat glanced into his glass, sniffed it, and knocked the rest of it back before putting it out of his reach. Loki made a strangled sound in his throat at being confronted with such blatant theft, but she shut him up with a look. "Kate can't look at anything to do with children without looking like someone punched her in the gut, and you've been drinking a great deal more than is healthy for you. I don't have to be a genius to figure out what happened even though we're all treading around it on eggshells. I know that right now, she'd rather leap off a cliff than talk to you about it, but you both need counselling. Together."

Incensed, he opened his mouth to condemn her for meddling in his affairs and trying to dictate what he should be doing to him, but something in her eyes made him close his mouth again. Instead, he pursed his lips and slid off his barstool, taking great care to straighten out his shirt, taking his time to get himself together. When he finally looked her in the eye, his own were like chips of ice. "I'd best get Ian," he informed her, and strode away.

He just about towed Ian and Kate back up to the living quarters in his haste to escape the company of the other Avengers.

He couldn't handle their pity.

* * *

Wary of what had happened the last time he tried to sink into Ian's mind, Loki instead cleared his own (which was no mean feat with Kate sitting there, close enough to touch) and invited Ian to walk into his head.

He hadn't expected Ian to succeed in finding his consciousness, let alone tumble into it with the force of a thundering storm. But, in the space between an inhale and exhale, Loki felt a door open in his mind. With an abrupt, headlong dive, Ian crash landed in Loki's happy place – the grand library of Asgard.

And he wasn't alone.

Kate had been swept up by Ian's projection and unceremoniously dumped under a table. As she clambered up, spitting hair out of her mouth, Loki, who had been in the process of hauling Ian to his feet, dropped him to the ground again in surprise.

He didn't hear Ian's muffled curse or Kate's swearing. His mind was working in overdrive – Ian was _far _more powerful than he'd realised, and worse: he had very little control over what he could do. Kate must have come to the same conclusion, because he saw fear and concern flash across her face before she schooled it into a façade of calm.

"Well," she breathed, shocking her brother (who'd been dusting himself off and hadn't noticed that he'd brought her along for the ride), "I guess we all made it, so let's get this party started."

Loki gestured to one of the study tables – with an uncomfortable jolt that she refused to analyse, Kate recognised it as the one that she'd once had sex with him on – and they plonked themselves down. Ian was eyeing his surroundings with open-mouthed wonder; he'd only been to Asgard once, for Kate's wedding, and was still overwhelmed by the beauty of the architecture and eye for detail. Loki cleared his throat to get his attention, and began lecturing.

"We're currently on the astral plane. I held a memory of a place in my mind as you edged into my consciousness, and you made it tangible by turning my own mind inwards and giving my memory shape. This is the library as I remember it; you're in the inroads of my mind, now, so I control the environment. Like so." He spread his arms, and a flock of birds burst into being above him and soared noisily out one of the huge bay windows overlooking Frigga's gardens. "If you walk into a person's mind, you generally won't be able to change anything in it without causing severe mental damage unless you are a powerful telepath, like you, or I." He didn't say that he thought that Ian was probably a stronger telepath than he. He didn't think that Ian was the sort of boy who would let power get to his head, but he _was _predisposed to panicking. There's nothing scarier than uncontrolled power in the hands of a teenager. "As you know, your sister is a telepath as well, but her telepathy developed differently from yours – and it is a secondary ability compared to her telekinesis. It's not likely that she will be able to astral project on her own."

Ian was frowning, mulling this over. "So, how did I bring _jie _along with me? All I did was reach out to you like I felt you do."

Kate, who had been listening to this very carefully, felt a shiver crawl up her spine. She'd just been watching Ian and Loki very closely when she felt herself lift from her body. In one second, she had been minding her own business in her own head, and in the next, she'd been tossed under a table in a foreign mind like a leaf.

Loki only shrugged eloquently. "I think that you just swept your sister along with you. It helped that her mind is attuned to both of ours, because she knows us well," – Kate was now staring out the window – "but you need to learn how to focus your abilities. Clear your mind and concentrate on one thing. Do not just aim at something and blast a tidal wave at it."

Ian ducked his head, rueful.

Kate knew that once Loki got started on talking about magic, he'd continue talking about it for a good while. Excusing herself quietly, she wandered over to the windows, gazing out into the palace grounds. Loki had brought them to Asgard in the late afternoon – it used to be her favourite time of the day, when the sun painted everything in glorious shades of gold. But the view no longer captivated her; she no longer felt any thrill of wonder as she leaned out the open window and inhaled the scent of flowers and fresh air. Bitterly, she glanced back at Ian and Loki, observing the way they interacted. Loki had always been kind and polite to her family; sometimes, she wondered if they'd all dreamed up the Loki who'd waged war on New York and killed scores of innocents for sport. But then she'd see him in battle: pitiless, scheming, and cruel, and be relieved that he was on their side. Or, actually, just _her _side. Loki probably wouldn't have given a fuck about whose side he was on as long as he was fighting alongside her.

But all that was over, now.

She drifted back over to Ian and Loki as the latter got up and gestured towards the huge double doors that Kate knew led out into a corridor lined with ancient tapestries. "Try to open a door into a room that you can control. It is a trifle more complicated, because you will be layering your own mind over mine, but if you can summon up enough willpower, it can be done. The more detailed your impression of where you want to go, the more complete your control will be."

Ian gulped and shut his eyes. Both Loki and Kate felt a strange tingling in their bones as Ian shifted the plane that they were on from Loki's control to his. Loki felt almost weak at the surrender of captaincy; he would have liked to say that Ian gained authority because he let him, but the truth was closer to Loki tentatively opening a window to find Ian already charging at the front door with a battering ram under his arm.

The strangeness in the air dissipated as Ian held on to the surroundings, making them his own. Finally, he shook out his shoulders and pushed through the double doors, turning his face up to the sun. Kate and Loki followed, shielding their eyes from the glare.

They were at a swimming complex; the blue and gold crest emblazoned on the bleachers proclaimed that they were at Ian's school, at the pool where he spent most of his free time training for water polo matches.

Ian had already shoved his sweatpants up to his knees and was dangling his legs in the water, comforted by the familiarity of his most favourite place in the world. Loki was less impressed with the heat of the Singaporean sun on his skin and the overpowering smell of chlorine. Wrinkling his nose, he scanned the surroundings, looking for a spot of shade but finding none.

"Err, Ian, maybe you could try changing something in the environment?"

Kate knew that Loki was secretly hoping that Ian would dump them all into the Arctic tundra, but her brother only took a deep breath, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes.

Nothing happened for a couple of heartbeats. Kate decided to sit down on the bleachers while waiting, but had to leap up suddenly as the bench beneath her quivered and groaned. In a few minutes, Ian had managed to turf grass over tiles and fold the bleachers into each other and brick them up into a house, transforming a high school swimming complex into their uncle's villa in Bali. When the final few leaves had sprouted into existence on the branches of the palm trees around them, Ian lay flat on his back in the grass, breathing heavily, legs still kicking in the pool – which had become smaller and more decorative.

Impressed, Kate leaned against a stone garden ornament, marvelling at the feel of granite against her elbow. Loki had slunk into the shade of a pavilion, thankful that the weather was far cooler than it had been moments before. There was even a fan thrown carelessly on a patio bench, which Loki picked up and put to good use. Once upon a time, Kate would have found the sight of Loki furiously fanning himself too adorable to resist. Now, she glanced away immediately, unwilling to deal with the feelings that he still had the power to stir in her.

Loki noted that his wife was determinedly avoiding looking at him, which kind of pissed him off to no end. But getting angry at her was pointless; getting angry and frightened was how they got to this stage in the first place. Sighing inwardly, he got up and went over to Ian to check how he was doing. The boy was powerful, but judging from the detail and reality of their surroundings, he'd poured everything of himself into manipulating the astral plane. It was amazing; Loki hadn't come across so much raw talent since… himself.

Ian was sweaty and panting and exhilarated with success. "I did it!" he crowed, pumping a fist in victory before dropping it back to the ground, exhausted.

Laughing, Loki reached down to try and lever him to his feet, but Ian waved him aside and sat up himself. "What next?" the boy asked, looking to his sister and his brother-in-law eagerly.

"We go home," Loki told him, noting the beads of perspiration that were steadily dripping off the boy's nose. "Take us back, Ian."

At this, Ian started to look a little nervous. "Err. How?"

"Think of your body, and follow the tug," Loki explained evenly, trying not to let on that he could feel little tremors travelling through the ground as Ian began to panic.

In a flash, Kate was on her knees beside her brother, hands cupping his face. "Think of home," she whispered. "Follow your instincts."

Calming himself, Ian locked eyes with Kate, then shimmered out of existence.

At Ian's departure, Loki felt decay creep into their surroundings – grass rapidly browned and the pool clouded over – Kate watched, fascinated, as vines climbed lazily up the façade of her uncle's house.

Then Loki was at her elbow, gently crowding her into his side. Kate started and tried to push him away, but he stilled her as the ground began to rumble and the rot accelerated. She clutched at him instinctively as a particularly violent shudder knocked her off balance, and a ripple of warmth surged through her before she was ripped from the astral plane and slammed back into her own body.

* * *

Ian was hovering anxiously above her, but confused by the familiarity of Loki's touch back on the astral plane, she reached for the latter automatically to reassure herself that he was alright.

Loki, who'd been blinking like an owl to reorient himself, froze as Kate's fingers brushed his knee. Upon realising what she was doing, Kate snatched her hand away and turned her back on him to ask Ian how he was, spine rigid with stress.

_So close_. Woeful, Loki scrubbed at his face with his hands. _Save my wife from falling into the void of the astral dimension, and she only reaches for me because of muscle memory_. But, to be honest, he admitted to himself, she had never been in any danger. Once Ian had left, Loki could have easily taken charge of the astral plane that the boy had created, but he hadn't seen much point in expending energy to stabilise it since they were leaving anyways.

Meanwhile, Kate had satisfied herself that her brother was physically fine but mentally exhausted, and had decided to take her leave. "I reckon I'm gonna crash, Squirt," she sighed, standing shakily.

Both Ian and Loki knew that she was engineering her escape so that she wouldn't have to think about her concern for her estranged husband, but they didn't push the issue.

As soon as she left the room, Ian leapt back into the seat beside Loki that he'd recently vacated. "So," he said, trying to play it casual. "Err, are you ok?"

Loki stared back at him blankly.

"Err, last night. Your memory."

Loki pretended not to hear him, and began talking about techniques to keep one's mind closed. Ian was mildly annoyed at this, but it's not like he'd actually been expecting an answer, anyways. Loki and Kate were both made for each other in the sense that if they didn't want to talk about it, they _really _didn't want to talk about it.

Leaning back into his chair, Ian focused on committing Loki's lecture to memory. Kate and Loki's soap-opera drama aside, it was crucial that he learned how to control his powers. He wasn't as much as a dumb jock as people assumed he that was, based on the fact that he liked contact sports was was good at them. He'd been astute enough to catch the looks on his sister's and Loki's faces as he'd worked his abilities. He didn't blame them. Near omnipotence even in the mind was a frightening thing to deal with.

Loki suddenly paused, frowning as his eyes darted around the room before he waved his hand and held his breath as if he expected that something dramatic would happen in response.

Nothing did.

Not wanting to scare Ian, he resumed his monologue, but his mind was uneasy. Someone had been spying on them, but the magical signature wasn't anything he could place. It was familiar, somewhat, but tainted.

It could have been entirely innocuous – his mother ordering a witch to place a surveillance spell to keep an eye on him, perhaps – but Loki would bet his right arm that something more sinister was afoot.

Upon returning to his quarters, Loki crossed to his wardrobe and rummaged about for his daggers without bothering to turn on the lights. He would sleep with them under his pillow, that night. Even though he preferred relying on magic, the feel of hard steel in his palm was immeasurably comforting.

As he reached into his coat to draw out the leather bundle containing his weapons, his fingers brushed against a velvet box that he had thrust hastily into that pocket as he had left his room to teleport to Midgard upon circumventing his mother's shielding spell.

Loki stood alone in the dark, a parcel of daggers in one hand and his wife's wedding ring in the other.

Shoving the weapons under the blanket, he sat down on his bed and opened the box; even with the curtains shut and the lights off, the enchanted, dwarf-hammered gold gleamed brightly, mockingly.

Forcing down a lump in his throat, he remembered coming home in the early morning to find their apartments empty, and Kate's engagement and wedding rings lying innocently on her dressing table.

He'd lost it entirely. When dawn broke, he'd found himself tear-stained and ragged in the ruins of their bedroom, her wedding ring cutting into the flesh of his palm.

He'd brought it to Midgard with him in the hopes that she would want to reconcile, but it was obvious that it would probably never happen.

Loki Odinson sat in the gloom of his own making, remembering his wedding.

* * *

_Thor hadn't seen Loki this exuberant since his brother had dressed him up as Freyja in a wedding dress and paraded him in front of a giant. _

_Frigga had mandated that Loki and Kate spend the night before their wedding apart; Kate got to stay in the rooms that they shared, while Loki was shunted off into a guest room near Thor's apartments. _

_He had been up since the crack of dawn, trying to sneak into his fiancée's bedroom (and failing, because his mother had put up very observant wards that kept recognising him and booting him out). Eventually giving up, he'd dressed in his ceremonial armour, helmet included, and gone to pester Thor. _

_Kate had insisted on following the Chinese tradition of having the groom's party collect the bride at her house – before they were allowed to see the bride, however, they'd have to get through all the bridesmaids by cajoling and bribing them (with token red packets of Asgardian gold or flowers)._

_It took a great deal of wheedling and gold to get himself, Thor, Tony and Ian past the barricade of bridesmaids (actually, it took a great deal of wheedling gold just to get past Darcy, who was really digging this part of being a bridesmaid), but it was worth it. _

_Thor had to gently snap Loki's jaw shut with a finger when the latter finally saw Kate in her lacy, golden wedding dress, bathed in the sunlight streaming in through the huge windows of their apartments._

_She looked like a fairy. _

_His__ fairy._

_Perhaps he'd stared a little too long, because she fidgeted self-consciously. "Erm. Hey, Lokes." _

_Without preamble, he swept her up in his arms and kissed her, ignoring Darcy's indignant squawk at his impatience. _

"_Hey," he breathed against her lips, giddy with emotion. "Shall we get married, now?"_

_She giggled, adjusting the gold comb in her hair – lilies, he registered; the comb of lilies that he'd given her – "I don't think you're supposed to do that until after your dad pronounces us man and wife." _

_Loki rolled his eyes. "I can kiss you whenever I want," he proclaimed. And to prove it, he lowered his head to seal his mouth to hers once more. _

_They were interrupted by Nat, who'd cleared her throat long and loudly. "Guys. Do you want to get married or not?" _

_Kate pulled out of his embrace sheepishly, checking the mirror to see if she still looked ethereal and magical. She did. _

_Loki held his arm out to her, grinning. She thought her own face would break from how much smiling she was doing, but she couldn't give a fuck. _

_He couldn't really remember much about the procession down to the Great Hall and his own journey down the aisle with his groomsmen as Kate waited outside for the bride's traditional wedding march, but time stood still for the entire eternity it took for her to walk down to him on her father's arm. _

_Loki was certain that they were the most ridiculously eager couple that had ever stood at that altar. He zoomed through the exchange of rings and ceremonial swords (it was supposed to be symbolic of guardianship and protection or some warlike bullshit; Loki really couldn't give a fuck as long as he got married), and as soon as the ring was on her finger, he tilted her head up and kissed her, drunk with joy. She'd chuckled into his mouth as he deepened the kiss, hungrily drawing her into his body. He was sure that he'd never be as happy again._

* * *

He'd been wrong, of course. Just like how he'd been sure that torture at the hands of the Other after falling into the Void would be the worst pain he'd ever feel for the rest of his existence.

He'd been so, so wrong.

* * *

**A/N: We're rolling merrily on to the end; just a couple more chapters left. Reviews are very much appreciated! **


	8. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. This is all unbeta'd, so read at your own risk. **

* * *

Kate was dreaming about her wedding day.

"You sure I look OK?" Kate anxiously tucked a lock of hair behind her ears – exasperated, Jane flipped it back out again.

"You look perfect. Stop undoing everything I did to you. You are _beautiful_." Easy for _Jane _to say. _Jane_ looked like she went to the Oscars on a regular basis.

But, Kate reflected at her reflection, she _did _clean up pretty good. Frigga had offered to lend her a tiara, but Kate had refused, opting to wear the comb that Loki had given her. _Crowned by love_, she'd crooned sappily, batting her eyelashes before bursting into laughter. Frigga had rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help the upward twitch of her mouth.

"You're going to be a _princess_," Darcy crowed, bouncing up and down on the bed. "Oh, my god, isn't this _surreal_? You're like a hotter Kate Middleton!"

Kate wouldn't really go as far as to say that she was hotter than Kate Middleton, because, really. How would you compare an apple and an orange?

Then the first part of Darcy's exclamation hit her.

"Oh _shit_," she gasped, going pale. "I'm going to be a princess. Oh, _fuck_."

Nat raised her eyebrows. "You did know that you were marrying _Prince_ Loki of Asgard, _God_ of Lies, Mischief, and Chaos, right?"

Kate tugged nervously at her lacy mandarin collar. "Yeah, but I hadn't really registered that I'd become a _princess_, with state duties and shit. What if they make me shake hands and open airports? I don't _like_ shaking hands! You never know what other people have touched! Like, what if they scratched their balls in the toilet like fifteen minutes ago and didn't wash their hands? _Gross_!"

"Wow. You really didn't think this through," Pepper sniggered, toying with her bracelet.

"What if I'm a terrible princess? What if the court hates me? What if the people get all revolutionary and I accidentally tell someone to eat cake because I _love _cake and like _bam_ my head's separated from my body and tossed into a basket?" Kate was building up into full freak-out mode; Jane grabbed her shoulders before she could slide into total panic.

"You are one of the strongest and smartest people I know," Jane told her firmly, "and I know a _lot _of smart people, _and _my boyfriend is pretty strong. Chill. Y'know, you'll pick it up. You have Loki to guide you, and you're pretty savvy. You just have to stop swearing at people, and I'm sure that you can restrain yourself. Right? I've seen you do it. You can do it."

Kate nodded shakily, trying to pull herself together. "OK," she whispered, curling a lock of hair around her finger – Jane slapped her hand away – "OK."

Then they heard the boys, and Darcy was up like a shot. Kate took one last look in the mirror – yes, she _was _gorgeous – and then turned to face the door. Loki was behind that door. She could hear Darcy deliberately being difficult, and couldn't help the giggle that bubbled up in her throat.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

Finally, the door burst open and Loki barged in – Kate leapt up to greet him – and he stopped short, staring, mouth agape.

The rest of the wedding party tumbled in behind him, smirking. Thor wore the biggest smirk of all as he moved forward to shut his brother's mouth.

But it was as if that touch was magic, or poison – instead of closing the gap between them and kissing her, like Kate _knew _that he had done on their wedding day, Loki shut his mouth, looked up at Thor, swallowed, and then looked back at her. The light was gone from his eyes – it was all hard hate and malice. Kate took a step back as dread unfolded in her chest.

Loki reached up and peeled his face away to reveal grey, scarred skin and too many teeth. Thor did the same, as did her friends behind them. They ripped the silks and leathers and lace from their bodies to reveal armour and weaponry; before, there hadn't been enough space between Darcy's painted-on sheath dress for a piece of tissue paper, and now there was a holster with an alien rifle resting on the hip of the monster who'd been hiding in her skin. Kate backed up against the window as the room filled with grinning chiaturi.

She knew that she should do something, anything; scream, attack, _wake up_, but she couldn't seem to draw enough oxygen into her body to think properly. The chiaturi filed out, grim and warlike, without a glance backward.

The bedroom was empty. The palace was dead.

Kate didn't know how long she stood there, but before she knew it, darkness was bleeding out of the shadows. Her lungs were slowly starting to work again, and she'd just mustered up a breath when the night was split by a desperate scream.

* * *

Loki was dreaming about having sex with Kate. Depressingly, he knew that it had to be a dream, because the way things were going, he'd never have sex with Kate again.

But it was so _real_.

His hands traced a line up her thighs and over her ass before settling on the flare of her hips as she straddled him and cupped his face in her hands. _I love you. _

And then she was braced on her forearms above him, her breasts pressed flat against his chest as she kissed him senseless. There was nothing quite like Kate's kisses: they were hungry, teasing, as ripe as a golden mango and just as juicy.

He slipped a hand between their bodies, brushing against her – she bucked involuntarily against him and he couldn't quite help the groan that the jar of her hips elicited – and slid himself inside her heat with a gasp that could have been a prayer.

He rolled them over, caging her between his arms as his lips fell greedily to her neck, and _thrust_.

Kate screamed. Spurred on by the sound, he suckled at her neck harder, but when she screamed again, it ended in a strangled gurgle that had him recoiling from her in horror.

Kate was frostbitten and withered, patches of corrosive blue eating through her skin and flesh like a spreading cancer. Within seconds, he was kneeling astride a scattering of cold, cold bones.

Loki scrambled over to the side of the bed and vomited, retching until he wasn't sure if he had a stomach any more. When he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he felt his heart stop beating.

_Blue_.

A low snigger sounded from the thick shadows in a corner of his room as he traced the clan markings on his face with a trembling finger.

_You kill everything you love, O God of Chaos. Does it matter whose son you are when your very being is corrupt and poisoned? _

Loki fought the urge to clap his hands over his ears as the Other taunted him from his perch. _Fear demon_, he realised, reaching wildly for the daggers that he kept in a drawer in his bedside table. He didn't know if the Other was actually in the room, or if he was merely a construct of the fear demons, but his main priority had to be leaving the nightmare. If he woke up, the Other, whether he was real or not, would not be able to follow him. Right?

Blocking out the taunts of the other, Loki clenched his fists tightly around the hilt of his daggers for comfort and shut his eyes, fighting to clear his mind.

He let his magic loose, seeking out weak points in the dream. It was as if a glass dome separated the waking world from him, but he hadn't been lauded as the most powerful magic-user that Asgard had ever seen for no reason.

Loki slammed the weight of his will against the dome, satisfied at the cracks of light that radiated from the point of impact. He reared back and struck again.

The nightmare broke on the third try, and he could hear the Other's howl of pain as the spell collapsed, propelling him back into his conscious body.

* * *

Loki bolted up, a dagger in his left hand raised to throw. The one that had been in his right was already embedded, quivering, in the wall opposite his bed from where he'd flung it upon breaking through into wakefulness.

Kicking his sheets away, he padded over to retrieve it, straining to hear something, anything that proved that he wasn't the only living thing in the building.

"Jarvis?"

The AI did not answer. For the first time, the tower was entirely silent, the air oppressive and suffocating.

Loki knew then that something was very, very wrong.

Throwing on his leathers and armour, he sheathed his daggers and sent out doubles to check on the other occupants of the residence, racing to Kate's room himself. He teleported through the locked door to find her thrashing in bed, mouth fixed in an agonised _O _of pain. Loki's palms broke out in sweat. _Fuck_.

He crossed the room in three long-legged strides to try and shake her awake, but she only shrank from his touch, tears streaming down her cheeks, as she lay trapped in her nightmare. As a last resort, he grabbed her face and tried to ease into her mind, but found that it was wrapped in a viscous darkness that clung to the edges of his own as he tried to slip through it, making him nauseous. He couldn't risk punching through the barrier – doing so might accidentally cause irreparable damage to her mind. Getting into the head of another person was much more complicated than getting out of the prison of his own.

Loki smoothed his fingers, slick with her tears and their mingled sweat, across the knives of his wife's cheekbones. Kate was now openly sobbing: great, wracking heaves threatened to choke her in her sleep. The sound of her distress galvanised her husband into action.

He'd failed to save her once before. He wouldn't let it happen again.

Changing tactics, he placed his thumb in the middle of her forehead and rummaged around her energy, checking for interference.

He smelled it before he found it. A thick, cloying enchantment sat heavily on her sleep, chaining her to her dreams and whatever demons awaited her in them.

There was only one other magic user in this world that could sustain an enchantment of such strength.

As his doubles reported that all the other occupants of the tower – Ian, Thor, Jane, Pepper, and Stark – were troubled in sleep, he was already rushing up to the terrace, where he'd only just set up the protection charm that morning. Instead of recalling his doubles to him, he sent them to wake the other members of the Avengers who _weren't _living in the Tower – from what he could sense, the rest of New York was, as of yet, unaffected by poisoned sleep. He didn't even stop to slide the glass doors open, choosing to teleport right through them to the easel, only to bounce back as he hit a protection barrier that hadn't been there hours before. Stumbling back, he whirled around at the sound of an exhilarated laugh.

Sigyn was leaning against the balcony out on the terrace, obviously immensely satisfied with herself as she appraised her work proudly. The reflecting mirror had been turned inwards and warped, the web of the dreamcatcher woven through with silk threads dipped in fresh tar.

She smiled at him as he threw an immobilisation spell at her, deflecting it with an easy flick of her wrist. "You've gotten rusty, Loki," she chided, sidling along the length of the railing.

He eyed her warily, palming a blade in his hand. Sigyn was too clever to engage in trash talk, and the only way he'd get _anything _out of her was if he caught her alive and applied the right amount of pressure.

At least, that would have been true two centuries ago. For all of her self-possession, there was a wild gleam in her eyes that he'd never noticed before. He reinforced the magicked steel of the dagger in his hand and let it fly at the bastardised protection charm – but with a shriek of laughter, Sigyn clapped her hands and the dagger shattered in mid flight.

She definitely couldn't have done that two centuries ago.

"Isn't it _beautiful_?" She pointed gleefully at her mirror, which was reflecting a chaotic smudge of shifting shadows pierced with a metallic blue that was bright enough to make his teeth hurt. "Is _this _the rush that men feel on the battlefield? The glory of magic and power?"

Refusing to indulge her, he continued looking for an opening as she cleverly threw shield after shield up in response to his silent telepathic probing.

Then, a flash of gold in the mirror caught his eye, and he glanced over at the roiling mess. The chaos of darkness had given way to a blurry image of Kate in her wedding dress, collapsed against a wall and weeping with her head in her hands.

Distracted, he almost missed the shard of glass that Sigyn spelled at him. He threw up a shield just in time, but it was shaky and disintegrated upon the projectile's impact, letting it through to slice him in the arm as he spun away.

He circled back to face Sigyn, defences up and heart pounding. Noting the way her eyes avidly followed the spread of blood through his sleeve, he felt sick to his stomach: _how had no one noticed her descent into madness?_

Deciding that perhaps it was time to break out an old trick, Loki created a multitude of doubles, taking advantage of her split second of confusion to teleport behind her and turn Jötunn. Sigyn's forte was illusion magic, so she could see through this sort of trickery in a heartbeat, but she hadn't been expecting him to grab her hands with his blue ones and _hold_. The agony of frostbite drove her to her knees. He stepped around her as she held her ruined hands to her chest, and the shock of his Jötunn form gave him the opening to casually drive a dagger through her belly.

Sigyn fell, head snapping back as her blood slowly pooled around her on the terrace. Unfazed by the gore, Loki knelt by her side and twisted the knife buried in her abdomen to get her attention as her eyes began to glaze. It was time for interrogation, and Loki was very, _very _good at interrogation.

"What did you do?"

Sigyn chuckled, blood bubbling to her lips. "Still so ignorant, _Highness_," she rasped. "So weak that your own wife left you to rot in your incompetence."

It was a real struggle to refrain from killing her then and there. Gritting his teeth, he shoved his rage aside in light of the more pressing issue at hand.

"_What did you do?_"

Sigyn gurgled and spat a wad of blood at him. It landed on his cheek, but he didn't move to wipe it away, opting to break her right elbow instead. To her credit, she only shuddered at the snap. "You're too late," she whispered. "The chiaturi are coming from their nightmares. The Other is coming for _you_. You should have recognised power when you had it. Love has made you _weak_."

And with that, she made a violent gesture with her left hand, despite the fact that her fingers were brittle and mottled with frostbite. Caught by surprise, Loki was tossed backward by a wave of magic. Sigyn staggered to her feet, wrenched the knife from her body and lunged towards him –

– Only to fall forward with a quiet sigh as a blue bolt from a chiaturi rifle hit her in the back.

Loki lurched forward to catch her on instinct, but had to throw both himself and the dead weight that was Sigyn to the side to avoid a second shot from the monster racing at them on a skiff.

He fell awkwardly, and as he was struggling to shift the wounded woman aside so that he could get a clear shot at the new threat, a single shot ran out, loud and clear. The chiaturi toppled off the skiff, and Loki ducked as it skimmed over his head and crashed over the side of the building.

The Black Widow stood just outside the sliding doors, barely looking winded from what must have been a frantic dash across the city to get to the tower ASAP.

A soft grunt brought his attention back to the dying woman in his arms. Rolling her over, he tried to wipe some blood off her face, but only succeeded in smearing it more liberally across her forehead. Bright sparks of magic wove from wound to wound, trying desperately to knit sinew and muscle back together, but there was too much damage to heal. It was a powerful reminder that even magic had its limits; even immortality was no match for brutality.

Inexplicably, as she opened her eyes to gaze tiredly at him for the last time, he felt a wave of sadness crash through him. He'd loved this woman, once upon a time, and she'd loved him back. He'd probably never know why she'd done this; why she'd allied with monsters, why she'd callously put the lives of others in danger, why she'd set herself on a path that she'd known might end in his death if all went well.

"I wanted more," she sighed, as if she'd read his mind. "… Worth little as woman. Worth nothing as non-warrior. Why… not?"

And then she was gone. Loki gently closed her eyes and lay her on the ground, carefully arranging her hands to rest peacefully on her bloodied stomach as a mark of respect for the Sigyn he had known. Then he rose, wincing as the mirror emitted a loud keening before shattering, sending tiny bits of glass everywhere. Thankfully, it was on the other side of the terrace, missing him and Nat.

The Widow had tramped over his side and was glaring at the rest of the city as chiaturi skiffs winked into being. "We're in shit," she announced optimistically. "I don't know where they're coming from, but we've got to stop them from coming. Cap's evacuating every civilian within a ten block radius with the help of the police, and Clint's got a nest somewhere nearby. Banner hulked out when we got here; I imagine that he's doing some damage already. But we need more people if we're going to get them all. Where are Stark and Thor?"

He filled her in as he stomped over to the ruined protection charm and studied its remains, trying to figure out how Sigyn had adapted it to suit her needs as he absently healed the superficial cut that she had inflicted with her glass missile. A brief examination of the component parts of the broken dreamcatcher showed that she'd managed to draw together an abundance of negative energy generated by fear demons to form a kind of portal. It would remain open for as long as the sleepers remained asleep, so she'd cast an enchantment over the occupants of the tower and turned the mirror inwards to amplify its stability. She'd only had enough power to focus the attention of the demons on the tower, but the collective dreams of six people would be enough to transport an army of chiaturi to Midgard if the portal remained open for long enough – in other words, if the sleepers remained unconscious for long enough. The sleep-spell would have lifted with Sigyn's death, but by now, the fear demons would have been able to use the terror generated by the nightmares of the tower's residents to trap them in their dreams.

He'd have to head to the astral plane himself to break the hold of the demons in order to wake the sleepers and close the portals.

Gritting his teeth, he called his doubles to him. Nat twitched as a dozen Lokis burst into being beside her, but in classic Black Widow fashion, she took it in her stride. "Defend the city with the remaining Avengers and take your orders from them," he told them tersely. "Ensure that the residential floors remain unmolested. I will attempt to close the portals, but our physical bodies must remain whole and undamaged whilst our minds are on the astral plane. I relinquish your command to the Widow. Serve me well."

Nat acknowledged the transfer in authority of his doubles over to her with a determined nod. "Godspeed, Loki."

They gripped arms in a gesture of comradeship before he teleported away.

He was still wary of bashing through the naturally defended consciousness of the regular person, but there was one person here who was predisposed to a wandering mind that could pull him into the plane. If Ian had months or years of training, perhaps his mental walls would be more difficult to breach. However, given that Loki had only begun teaching him properly less than six hours ago, it was unlikely that his mind would be fully closed, even now.

Loki materialised in Ian's room, placed his hands on the boy's fevered head, and opened his mind.

* * *

**A/N: I'm sorry that this took a while; the weekend has been _mad_. Updates might come a little more slowly, because the next few weeks are going to be incredibly busy for me (and I'll be travelling a lot; gotta enjoy the last vestiges of summer before I start on my final year of law school!). BUT; the good news is that there are only a couple of chapters left. **

**Let me know what you think about this chapter! IDK about you, but I always feel really motivated to write after receiving reviews (lulz). **


	9. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. All this is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk. **

* * *

Ian was drowning.

He was a strong boy and a powerful swimmer. He'd always been most at home in the pool, doing drills or just lazing around, floating on his back on a hot day. But now, no matter how hard he kicked his feet and cut his arms through the heavy green water, the glimmering gold of the surface drifted further and further away. Above him were a dance of limp figures floating to the surface – _Matt, Derrick, Ashvin, Haziq, Zhi Xiang… _it seemed like everyone in his school had given up the fight, but as a figure drifted past him, he caught sight of rows of teeth and inhuman claws. Fear, cold and creeping, began to lace up his spine and numb his extremities. _What was happening_?

A shape lurked in the corner of his eye, but he wasn't sure if he imagined the blot of night, because the edges of his vision were going dark. He reached out for something, anything, and anyone that he could hold on to and came up empty. He was in an ocean of dead friends and classmates.

His lungs were burning with the effort it took to hold his breath – surely an inhale of water could quench the fire in his chest –

A hand clamped over his nose and mouth, prompting him to struggle briefly before Loki stuck his face into his and projected a single thought into his head: _change it! _

Realisation struck like a thunderbolt.

Ian shook himself free of Loki and projected his will onto the surroundings. _Air_, he thought frantically, _dry_. With a dull roaring, water began draining away like someone had pulled a plug from the sink he was in. Loki shoved Ian out of the way as something slithery and dark rushed past him with an awful wail that sounded in their bones, but their horror was quickly eclipsed by the relief of their feet hitting the ground and water gently washing away from their bodies, leaving them drenched and gasping on a sandbar.

Ian's knees buckled and he collapsed, taking in huge gulps of sweet air, intoxicated by the rush of oxygen to his brain. When he looked up, Loki was leaning against a palm tree, chest heaving. "We were on a boat," Ian croaked when he finally got his lungs working. "Something tore a hole in the bottom, and then we were in the ocean. I couldn't move fast enough, I couldn't grab on to anything; something just kept pulling me down and down and down." He couldn't tell if the wetness on his face was seawater or tears. "And my friends, they… they. They turned into _monsters_."

Loki would have liked to wait for Ian to calm himself, but they were running out of time. The Avengers were fighting a conceivably never-ending supply of chiaturi at half-strength, and they had to get moving. "A fear demon was lurking in your dreams," he informed the boy, who promptly turned a couple of shades paler under his tan. "I'm afraid that the monsters that you saw are chiaturi soldiers, and they are currently attempting to lay waste to New York. We need to collect the others and get out of here so that we can close the portals. You will have to help me to open doors on the astral plane, because the greater part of my energy is currently being expended on keeping my doubles corporeal in the physical world." Kate would have been furious at Loki for putting Ian in the line of fire if she hadn't been furious with him already, but never mind that. She also would have bitched about how difficult things had to be, but that was Kate. She still would have done the needful, anyways, so. Courage clearly ran in the family.

Loki squinted at the bright sun above them and sent a probe out for any lingering malice that would indicate a lurking fear demon. His check came up clean, so he got to his feet and grabbed Ian's shoulders, making sure that he was listening closely. "Fear demons are not your greatest threat. They only feed off your fear, so they will not kill you. Another person on the astral plane, however, can. Remember that the others are warriors, and they will not know from first glance if you are a construct of their nightmare or not. You will bring all your injuries back with you. If you die here, you die there. Do you understand?"

He watched the boy as he visibly steeled himself before nodding. _Brave kid_. If things were going to shit, he'd get Ian out first. The world needs boys like him.

"Can you locate your sister's subconscious?"

Ian screwed his face up in concentration before shaking his head ruefully. He hadn't been trained to differentiate minds from each other, which made location on the astral plane difficult, so, fine. They would have to do this by trial and error.

"Take us to the tower," Loki instructed. As he watched, Ian drew a portal in the air in the guise of the great glass sliding doors that led from the terrace into the living area at Tony's. He could just make out a figure behind the glass, but it was indistinct.

With a great heave, Ian slid the door open and stepped into Stark Tower.

* * *

Anthony Stark had everything that a man could ever want. If he ever wanted something, he could just grunt in its direction and someone on his payroll would get it delivered to his house in about five minutes flat. He was a certified genius and a successful businessman (granted, he had people running the business _for _him, but he technically still owned the entire damn thing). He had the most beautiful woman in the whole goddamn world in his bed and in his boardroom, and, for some reason, she loved him like the moon loves the ocean.

Anthony Stark also had a drinking problem.

He wasn't sure how his liver was handling the abuse that he chucked at it on a daily basis, but to be fair, he didn't drink _all _that much, nowadays: a nightcap now and then, and a few more glasses of scotch when the mood was either celebratory or downright depressing. It had been a while since he'd gotten _shitfaced-pissed-as-fuck_ drunk.

Yet, here he was in his living room, at his bar, in his Iron Man suit with the face plate flipped up, getting more wasted than a nineteen-year-old frat boy at the first party of the year. He couldn't even remember why he'd started drinking in the first place. He only registered the blessed blankness that the liquor brought.

There was also an added bonus to drinking: the sharp scent of alcohol could hide the stench of burnt flesh and ruptured intestines, but only if it was inches from one's nose.

So Anthony Stark kept his nose firmly buried in his never-ending glass of whisky, pretending for just another moment longer that for everything that he fixed, he hadn't fucked up ten more in an inexplicable fit of self-destruction. He wanted to forget that he was only ever destined to allow his demons to ride on his back and tempt him back into bad habits.

He wanted desperately to ignore the mutilated body of the woman that he loved slumped brokenly against the coffee table behind him, a smoking hole allowing one to see clean through her torso.

He could have sworn that despite the cutting-edge cooling technology that he'd built into his suit that prevented his arsenal from overheating, his palm blasters were still warm.

* * *

Ian had stopped short upon entering the living room. Loki nudged him aside so that he could enter, but immediately wished that he hadn't.

The place reeked of blood and gore and charred flesh, and to make things worse, the source of the smell was on display for all to see. _If you die here, you die there_.

Ian looked like he was going to throw up. Loki shoved the kid behind him and willed him to stay put as he approached the bar very warily. A drunk Tony in a fully functional Iron Man suit was one of Loki's worst nightmares. Apparently, it was one of Tony's, too.

The Man of Iron looked up blearily from his glass and fought to focus on his best friend as he approached. Because that what Loki was, he'd realised a while back. And Loki was pretty much an unbreakable best friend, so he was safe to have around, right? He didn't see Ian, who was staring at him in the manner that one reserved for fallen heroes: a mixture of disgust, horror, and unfathomable pity. "She got in my way," he croaked, trying to justify the horror behind him. It sounded weak, even to him, but what was he supposed to say? It was the truth, and the truth sometimes sounds weak because the things that people do are weak.

Loki only reached for the whisky, but Tony cottoned on and held it out of his reach. "_No_," he insisted, sloshing it around as Loki attempted to get around him. "_Mine._"

As Loki tried to separate Tony from his poison, Ian, against his better judgment, had inched over to Pepper's corpse.

And the closer he got, the more certain he was that it wasn't Pepper. When he reached out his hand and gingerly prodded at one of her fingers, he confirmed that knowledge. This 'Pepper' was as much a part of the surroundings as the sofa was, and had never been anything more.

Relieved, he turned to shout the news to Loki, but stopped short upon finding both men engaged in a heated argument about Tony's 'ridiculous self-centredness and destructive behaviour'.

He really didn't want to interrupt that, especially given the volatility of the tempers of both men, so that left him to try and find Pepper.

He hadn't the faintest idea of where to look, but gazing upon the corpse's bloodied face, he thought he saw the faintest flicker of light behind her open eyes. He knew that the corpse was just a prop in Tony's nightmare, but could it also double as a prison for Pepper? Curious, he set his jaw and gripped her temples, delving into the ruined body's ruined mind.

He found himself in a windowless, doorless white room; Pepper was slumped against a wall on its far side.

He was at her side before he knew what he was doing, waving his hand in front of her glassy eyes and checking her pulse. She was alive, but completely catatonic. Ian was honest-to-god on the verge of a freak-out; he was a fifteen-year-old water-polo fanatic, and was not at all equipped to deal with a possibly mentally damaged woman hiding in the mind of a body that looked like her, on the astral plane.

Still, he had to try.

She wasn't responding to any external stimuli, so he decided to try and project his thoughts directly into her mind, like Loki had. If he was a telepath like Kate, he could, technically, do it; _right_?

Touching a finger to Pepper's forehead, he ran a link down from his own consciousness through that little bridge and into her own head. _Pepper_.

She blinked.

Heartened, Ian pressed on. _Pepper. You've gotta snap out of it. This isn't real. I'm going to take you and Tony back home, but you've got to wake up_.

_Who? _Pepper's mind-voice was thin, weak, and strangely lost-sounding. Ian was a little worried about that; the Pepper Potts that he knew was _never _lost and _always _in control.

_Tony. Your boyfriend. Remember Tony? _And he sent flashes of his memories of Tony and her together to her.

There was a flicker of recognition, followed by a wave of despair. _He leaves me_, she whispered. Ian caught a sense of panic and grief, as he saw the Battle of New York from Pepper's eyes – as he saw Iron Man heft a nuclear warhead over his back and disappear into an alien wormhole.

He thought of his sister and how she insisted on diving headfirst into anything that she felt needed her involvement (which was a lot, because she was, quite honestly, quite a busybody), despite how she complained about needing to solve everything with a grenade and a telekinetic bash to the head. Loki hated it when she put herself in the line of fire, but he followed her into it anyways, because it was the only way he could conceivably keep her safe. He kept her protected while she did what she needed to do, instead of going on and on about how she should stop testing the limits of her immortality. He supported her – both physically on the field and emotionally in her goals.

Pepper was Tony's Loki in battle, Ian realised. She was the reason why he could be Iron Man; without her, he wouldn't have a life to come back to. _You are the main reason why he fights to protect us_, Ian told her firmly. _He loves you. He needs you. It's not all selfish that he wants to save the world – and save you. _

_What if he never comes back? _

There it was. Pepper's biggest fear: that Tony didn't know that she needed him just as much as he needed her, and he'd up and leave her in the course of performing some heroic act that would get him killed.

_You'd have to deal with it_, Ian said honestly, and flinched at her immediate recoil. He really sucked at this. Scrambling to clarify himself, he bumbled on. _I mean, you will have to accept that he loved you enough to die for you. It would be better if he loved you in such a way that would ensure that he would live for you, but sometimes, we don't have that option. Tony feels responsible for the safety of millions of others, and that responsibility may lead you where you may not follow. You just have to be ok with that if you want to be with him. You gotta ask if you love him enough to let him be the way he is. Because he loves you the best that he knows how. He does. _

Pepper seemed to consider that. _I love him_, she mused, then stronger – _I love him._

Holding his breath, Ian withdrew slowly from Pepper's mind. When he opened his eyes, Pepper was crying silently, tears zigzagging slowly down her face, but she was _there_, and she was lucid. He held his hand out to her. She took it after a beat of hesitation with a watery smile, and so he led her, like he would his sister, out into the astral plane.

The first thing he noted was that the argument between Loki and Tony had intensified. It was kind of like a replay of New York, except that Loki was clearly on the losing end, given that he was refusing to go on any sort of offensive. He was, instead, trying to slow Tony down and immobilise him, but of course, all the stuff that Loki threw in his way only made him angrier.

Ian was still holding on to Pepper's temples – except, it was a whole and healthy Pepper instead of a corpse. Pepper opened her eyes, dazed and confused, and made to sit up. But, it was in that moment that Tony shot another blast at Loki, which the god deflected easily – but the energy beam ricocheted against Loki's invisible barrier and went wide.

Ian genuinely thought that he was going to die as the blast streaked towards his head. He raised his hands over his face instinctively, but the hit never came. Peeking under his arms, he saw no trace of any energy beam, but Loki was staring at him solemnly – _what happened_?

Pepper had launched herself at Tony and was now sobbing openly in his arms. He had his face buried in her hair, and it was obvious that he was crying as well.

Loki crossed over to Ian, giving the couple their space. "You extinguished the blast," he told him, reading his expression of confusion. "You banished it from the plane." This was pretty serious stuff; near omnipotence, especially on the astral plane, could be very dangerous. Actually, near omnipotence in a human was just downright _bad _for sanity.

Ian was shaking for about the same reason. He didn't quite understand what he could do, and what he did, exactly, but he knew that he had a lot more power than should be allotted to a single person. He also knew that he had no idea of what to do with it.

They were interrupted by the sound of Tony clearing his throat and blowing his nose. The shock of almost having killed a fifteen-year-old seemed to have jolted him into sobriety; he looked at both Loki and Ian with clear eyes. "I'm so, so sorry, guys," he rasped, looking as though he was about to burst into tears all over again. He made to say more, but Loki cut him off.

"We understand. But now, we need to find Kate and the others. Ian, can you open another door to where you think Kate may be?"

Clearly, he was more interested in finding Kate than Thor and Jane, but Ian kind of got the rationale behind that. Loki was, essentially, still a very selfish man, and Kate was his main priority. Thor could look after himself, and Jane… well. He wasn't married to _her_.

Shifting his focus to the task at hand, he decided to try the outskirts of Asgard – he'd been there, before, in Kate's dreams; there was a chance that she'd be there. At least, he hoped so.

Taking a deep breath, he slid the glass doors open once more, and stepped outside. The others followed, shielding their eyes from the sunlight.

* * *

The grass was soft beneath their feet as they tumbled out onto the cliffs outside Asgard. It was immediately obvious that Kate wasn't there – but Thor was.

And judging from the agony on his face as he knelt before a swirling black vortex and the screams that sounded from within it, Jane was there, too.

Loki sprinted to his brother's side, dropping to the ground before him. The thunder god was bound, gagged and blindfolded, weaponless, and slowly going mad as he listened to Jane's shrieks of terror and pain as a fear demon tortured her from beyond their reach. His arms flexed helplessly against the leather that bound his wrists, and, to Loki's extreme discomfort, tears were rapidly soaking through the dark fabric covering his eyes. Suddenly furious at the audacity of the demons in chaining _his _brother, a _god_, Loki reached out to rip the blindfold from Thor's face. But, it was as if there was a barrier between them; he could get no closer than an inch from his brother's body before being repelled.

"Thor. Can you hear me? _Thor_."

Thor stilled, then nodded once, slowly, turning his head to his brother. His silent plea was obvious in every line of his body: _help her. Save her._

Then, a shot and a muffled swear distracted him; Loki swivelled his head to find Tony shaking his gauntlet in frustration. "It absorbed the blast," he grunted. Loki turned to catch Ian's eye, but the boy shook his head. So he couldn't bring the barrier down, either.

Loki reached out to the vortex, but encountered the same sticky, tarlike darkness that he'd run into when he was trying to wake Kate. Sickened, he pulled away. That was all fear demon. The only way for her to escape was to beat it, but she was totally on her own; she wouldn't have the help that the others had gotten in beating their own nightmares, because she was most likely so deep in her own fear that no one could cut through the agony to reach her…

… Unless he changed the odds by giving her the one person whom she would definitely listen to.

Turning his attention back to Thor, he got ready to deliver the best pep talk that he had _ever _given _anyone _in the entirety of his millennia-long existence.

"Brother," he began, lowly and urgently. "Fear demons play mind games. You are only helpless because you _believe _that you are. Your strength lies not in you being an Asgardian. It lies not in you being physically capable of lifting multiple oxen without breaking a sweat. It lies not in you being deemed worthy to wield Mjolnir. It lies in _yourself_. You are _never _helpless unless you _allow _yourself to be. Fight it. Fight your bonds – not merely for form's sake, but truly _rage_ against them. By the nine, dotard, have you grown _soft_?"

And there it was.

With a roar, Thor burst free of his restraints and tore the blindfold from his eyes and the gag from his mouth. He made to storm the vortex, but Loki knocked him backwards. "Do not _touch _it!" He hissed, gripping Thor's arm hard enough to bruise.

Thor shrugged his brother off, but heeded his advice.

"Jane," he cried, struggling to be heard over her screams, "Fight it, Jane; whatever it is, it is not _real_. You are brave, you are courageous, you are _strong_. Do not allow it to best you."

Loki almost rolled his eyes at that; pep talks worked on Thor, but he highly doubted that they would work on a non-warrior who was frightened out of her mind. Jane had to be coaxed. Gods above. Did he have to do _everything_?

Her screams had subsided into a broken sobbing.

"_Kill me,_" they heard her moan. Thor jerked forward in an attempt to charge the barrier again, but Loki threw his hand out once more.

"Fear doesn't kill us," Loki called over her distress and the whirling whoosh of the vortex. "It beats us back, and cripples us, but it is not meant to kill. Pick yourself up, Jane. Work through your fear. Stand."

"I _can't_," she gurgled through strangled breaths. "_No._"

Thor fell to his knees once more, clenching and unclenching his fists. "I'm here, Jane, my love, my beloved. You are not alone. You will never be alone. I am with you, always. Please. Fight it. _Please_."

There was a very pregnant pause before the darkness screeched and recoiled, whipping aside to show a battered, bruised, beaten woman swaying unsteadily on her feet.

That was all the opening that Loki needed.

He wedged a block of magic in that space and ground the swirling vortex to a halt as Thor finally rushed forward, unhindered, to catch her up in his arms. With an agonised wail, the demon broke away from Loki's control and reared upwards, about to engulf both Jane and Thor.

It had reckoned without Ian.

The demon slammed into a silver wall that, quite literally, built itself into a shelter over the thunder god, and which proceeded to wrap itself around the writhing black mass, encasing it in fluid, contracting metal. The adults watched in awe as Ian trapped the demon in a hollow, silver ball, which soared through the air to land in his outstretched palm. Wiping sweat from his brow, he offered it to Loki, who tucked it in the folds of his leathers to be disposed of later. He'd have to travel to another dimension to chuck it, and he honestly did _not _have the energy to do that at the moment.

"How did you know to use silver?" he asked curiously.

Ian shrugged, still breathing hard as he watched Thor frantically examine his girlfriend's injuries. "I wanted to contain it, and that was the first thing that came into existence."

Then he toppled heavily into the grass in a dead faint.

Pepper, who'd been silently clutching onto Tony for the entirety of what happened, yelped in alarm and flew over to him, but Loki, as usual, got there first. Peering anxiously down into the boy's face, he placed a soothing hand over his forehead and revived him.

Ian blinked furiously before trying to heave himself up on his elbows (he failed). "I'm good," he mumbled, looking irritating at himself for showing weakness. "I'm just exhausted."

_As he should be_, Loki thought, waving Thor and Jane over. _Not even I could contain a fully-grown fear demon without exerting myself_.

"You will take Pepper, Tony, Jane and Thor back to the tower," he told the boy firmly, cutting him off when his expression grew mulish. "You've used up a great deal of power today, and we cannot allow you to collapse here. I will recall my doubles once you've arrived back on the physical plane; that should provide me with enough energy to handle anything else that will come. I will carry on the search for Kate; I believe I know where she is, and I will not be coming back without her."

Ian looked like he was going to cry. "Do you promise that you will bring her back?"

Loki had a feeling that he wasn't just talking about physically returning her to reality. To be honest, he wasn't sure if Kate would ever recover psychologically from what had happened, but he wasn't the god of lies for nothing. "I promise," he said, and made them all hold on to each other.

Thor, who was supporting practically all of Jane's weight with the hand that wasn't holding Ian's, met Loki's eyes. "The chiaturi will pay for what they have done," he swore. "I thank you for aiding us, brother."

Loki only nodded. They were wasting time.

Without further ado, Ian let out a pulse of telepathic energy, and they were gone.

With a flex of magic, Loki recalled his doubles, feeling a surge of power as his resources returned to his body. Flicking his wrist, he opened a door into the bedchambers previously shared by him and Kate. The fear demons were showing them their worst nightmares.

He already knew what Kate's was. They'd shared it.

* * *

**A/N: I am _so _sorry for the wait! This chapter is a little longer than usual (at least, for my stories), so I hope that it makes up for the delay in posting. Let me know what you think! (Only two more chapters to go!)**


	10. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. All of this is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk. **

* * *

_Kate had meant for the baby to be a surprise for everyone on Midgard. She couldn't travel while pregnant anyways, so she and Loki just decided not to tell anyone – excluding Tony, whom Loki had zipped over to for celebratory drinks (so, by default, Pepper knew). Jane knew, of course, because she was dating Thor, who obviously knew that his sister-in-law and brother were procreating. _

_But just because they kept mum about the baby growing in Kate's belly, it didn't mean that they were upset or ashamed about it. _

_Au contraire. _

_Kate went about her daily diplomatic duties in a happy daze, doing things that were decidedly out-of-character for her, like cooing to her belly and rubbing it frequently (other things, like eating practically everything in sight and slouching around all day in her pyjamas if she could get away with it, remained the same). Loki went a little nuts and cordoned off a spare room in their apartments, spending hours in it only to emerge sweat-stained and splattered with paint – and, once and inexplicably, dirt. But he'd also immediately run for Kate the second he shut the door behind him, and try to embrace her while filthy._

_She would not be impressed, but the make-up sex was always worth the telekinetic onslaught of everything in reach. What else would one expect when deliberately annoying a pregnant woman? _

_They had five golden months together. Then it all went to hell. _

_Loki had been out on a routine patrol around the borders of Asgard when Kate was woken from an afternoon nap by a sharp pain in her gut. _

_She curled up instinctively, trying to breathe through what she _thought_ was a cramp and fighting to stifle the rising panic that bubbled to her throat as a sickening slickness soaked through her undergarments. Then another stab of pain punched through her, and all she could do was scream._

* * *

The first thing that Loki saw upon materialising in his bedroom was Kate's back, silhouetted black against the window she was standing in front of. Relieved, he strode over to her, but stopped short as she pivoted around slowly, gazing adoringly at something cradled in her arms.

Loki's blood ran cold.

A tiny, underdeveloped child, skin mottled blue and pale and still sticky with fluids, lay limply in her grasp. Nausea rolled in Loki's stomach as his wife cuddled and snuggled the dead child – and it intensified as he realised that the corpse was killing her with its touch. Her skin blistered and peeled back as she smoothed a thumb across his forehead and brought his cheek to hers, flaking to the ground in bloody sheets. As she kissed him, her lips cracked and bled, withering away to expose pink gums and rows of blood-flecked teeth.

Yet, Kate didn't seem to notice, or register any pain. "My darling," she whispered to the baby, "My little Agni."

She looked up at Loki, flesh hanging off parts of her face as blisters crawled up her temple. "Look at our little boy, Loki," she crowed. "Look at our baby."

And she turned the foetus toward him so he could see that his eyes, while closed, were exactly the same shape as his own. Grief threatened to swamp him right then and there, so he tore his eyes from his child and looked into his wife's – as if that would have a stabilising effect on his emotions.

Loki fully understood the phrase '_the eyes are the windows to the soul_' – he'd banked on it often enough in the past millennia to manipulate his way into getting whatever he'd wanted. He always could read Kate like a book because her own were so expressive – huge, dark, and always brimming with some sort of emotion.

But, not now: they were flat black; cold and empty. For all her enthusiasm for her toxic newborn, Kate was dead inside.

Then he realised that this wasn't Kate at all. It wasn't even Kate's nightmare.

It was his.

* * *

_Loki was recalled from his squad and rushed back to the palace. He'd teleported directly into the infirmary, only to see his mother and Eir, the goddess of healing, clustered around a bed at the far end. The only sound in the entire chamber was that of broken, gasping cries from the bed's occupant. _

_Frigga looked up, sensing his presence, and beckoned to Eir, who had been fretting nervously with the various medical apparatuses beside the bed. The two women glanced at him, then filed out the door behind him, heads bowed. His mother laid a comforting arm on his shoulder, but he couldn't feel it. All his attention was occupied by the slight figure cocooned in blankets on the bed, her dark hair splayed out on the pillow, giving her the look of a drowned person. She was holding a small bundle to her chest – and then Loki knew true grief. _

_He didn't even realise that his feet were carrying him to his family until his shadow fell over his wife and stillborn child. _

_Kate turned her face up to his, and it felt like his heart broke anew. "We lost him," she whispered brokenly. "I lost him." _

_Still silent, Loki bent down to prise the bundle from Kate's arms. She held fast for a brief moment before relinquishing her child, falling back amongst the pillows and breathing in great, racking sobs. _

_Loki brushed the shroud from his son's face numbly, noting the patchwork of blue and pale on his skin, the tiny, delicate features, and the unmistakable marks of strangulation around his neck as he was executed by his own lifeline. _

_Suddenly overcome, he thrust the baby back at Kate. _

"_Take it," he croaked. "I want no part of this." _

_Confused, she cradled the dead child closer, eyes wide and bloodshot. _

"_I want no part of this grief, this agony," he clarified, pacing away, trying to distance himself from the roaring in his ears and failing miserably. "I want no son!" _

_Kate was stunned. "Loki," she breathed, voice cracking, "Loki. What are you saying?" _

_He spun around, and she shrank from the vehemence of his anger. "This should never have happened! We should never have fallen in love, never have married, never have known such joy only for all of it to be ripped from us like a rattle from an infant!" He stalked forward again, stopping at the foot of her bed and glaring at the child. "It almost killed you," he said, more quietly. "Better that you had died like a hero all those years ago than be slaughtered like a mother with no purpose." _

_And he turned on his heel and strode away._

_Unable to process the entirety of her grief and her husband's venom, Kate felt the tears, helpless and frustrated and hurt and desperately sad, slide from the corners of her eyes and down the already sticky cliff of her cheeks. "Loki," she tried to say through numb lips. "Loki, please." _

_He was almost at the door. _

"_Stay," she hiccoughed as her breathing hitched. "I love you; come back – I love you-"_

_Loki paused at the threshold. _

"_Loki!" _

_He teleported away without glancing back._

* * *

Loki had to remind himself to keep breathing through the stones in his windpipe. He'd been afraid – frightened by the crippling weakness that drove him to erase all the careful preparation he had made for the birth of his child: after leaving Kate, he'd cancelled orders for jewels from Vanaheim, a cradle from Nidavellir, and clever toys fashioned out of spun light from Alfheim. He'd refused to look into the eyes of the tradesmen and craftsmen and see their pity as a prince of Asgard systematically undid his plans to spoil his child – because there was no more child to spoil.

And when he'd returned from that whirlwind, vicious attempt to expunge the grief from his system, he'd found his chambers empty. The doors were still hanging brokenly from their hinges from where the guards had burst into his bedroom in response to their princess' screams and the bedsheets were still soaked with blood – the smell of it nauseated him so much that he stumbled into the wardrobe to escape the coppery tang of death. Then he'd caught sight of his wife's wedding and engagement rings glinting palely on her dressing table in the moonlight.

Ian had seen the rest.

The grotesque wraiths of his wife and child were still standing before him in his clean, untouched bedroom; she was staring at him as if she expected him to _say_ something, _do_ something, _give her to answer to every existential question in the universe_. He stared back mutely, not trusting himself to speak. His eyes fell to her left hand – even here and now, she wasn't wearing her rings. Even holding an imprint of their dead baby, she denied their marriage.

Loki felt something in him break. He loved her; he'd had her and he'd lost her. But yet, she was _here_, and even though she was little more than bloody flesh and bone, she was still his wife. Kate was in there _somewhere_. He could feel it.

He lunged forward and wrapped the monstrous illusion of his wife in a tight embrace, trapping the child between their bodies. Burying his nose in her hair, he inhaled, but instead of smelling vanilla and jasmine, all that lodged in the back of his throat was the metallic tang of blood. Loki fought down the bile that rose automatically in his gullet and focused on directing his emotions to his wife in the nightmare. "I am sorry," he ground out, shaking so hard that he felt Kate's teeth jangle in her skull. "I am always sorry for what I do, but I regret this the most. I am sorry that I said those things, I am sorry that I left you, I am so, _so sorry_. I love you. You're the best thing that's happened to me in _millennia_. I love you. Kate; I love you. Come back to me, Kate. Please. _I love you_."

His carefully constructed plea for forgiveness had descended into babbling, but it must have touched her, wherever she'd been trapped in the nightmare. Something in the air snapped, and then he found that he was holding on to his real wife, who was inexplicably in her wedding dress, the lace bloodied up to the elbows.

And she was holding on to him like a lifeline.

* * *

Kate wasn't quite sure how she got from working frantically over herself and her dead baby as a third person to being enveloped in Loki's steel-and-leather embrace, but she let herself be swept into it anyways. She could still feel the coldness of her child's skin as she plucked helplessly at the umbilical cord tethering him to the dream-her; or was this even a dream?

Loki was here, mumbling into her hair and trembling as he held her. She hadn't even realised that she was crying, but there was moisture against her cheek, smearing against the leather of his vest. Her world had melted into a blur of tears and blood and hollow sadness, but at least someone was holding her together, right?

The blood on her sleeves was slowly turning cold in the still air. Suddenly uncomfortable with the silence, Kate said the first thing that came to mind. "I tried," she croaked, closing her eyes to try to blot the image of her son and her husband's face when he held him from her mind. "I tried, I really did. I tried."

The words _I'm sorry_ hung unspoken in the air. Loki's gut clenched with guilt.

He hushed her, holding on to her tighter. "It was not your doing. None of this was your doing."

Kate pressed her lips into a thin line and held on to the edges of his coat. She knew that it wasn't her fault that her child had died in her own body. But that didn't stop her from feeling like she'd contributed towards his death.

With that thought, something in the air broke again, and both Loki and Kate whipped around to find a ghostly mirror of Kate, bitter-eyed and hard-mouthed, kneeling on the bed, empty-armed and bloodstained. Kate swallowed hard to quell her rising nausea at the sight of her soiled skirts, and she felt Loki stiffen in response to the drifting stench of fresh blood and slow decay.

"Grief is crippling, isn't it?"

Kate was jostled as Loki whirled about to face a grey-skinned monster with far too many teeth grinning at them as he lounged against a bookcase. Her heart began pounding in her ears as Loki began manoeuvring them around, trying to get their backs to a wall. _The Other_.

Off-balance and emotionally vulnerable as she was, Kate knew that she had to sink into her training and start thinking her way out of this. She squeezed Loki's hand briefly before pulling away, sidling silently against the wall, circling around to the Other's back.

"No torture I could have imagined would have caused you so much pain." The monster was stalking towards Loki now, running its fingers gently down the blade of a cruel, ugly-looking blade. Loki had his back to a window and his knives in his fists, opting not to engage the monster in conversation. The gleam in his eyes said it all: the Other would not be surviving the hour.

Kate noted how Loki kept his gaze firmly on the Other, careful not to give away her position as she snuck across the room.

But they'd both forgotten about the other Kate.

Just as Kate was prepared to launch herself bodily at the Other, a weight collided with her back, sending her sprawling to the floor. Dazed, she managed to glimpse Loki reaching for her before he was blocked by the grey monster, and suddenly the air was sharp with the ringing clang of metal on metal.

Kate felt a hand fist in her hair. Drill training moved her limbs without her thinking about it, bringing her left arm up as a buffer against her forehead and the ground as her assailant tried to crack her skull. _Concussed psychics are dead psychics_, Loki had told her a lifetime ago in Stark's gym. A crack of pain reverberating through her bones told her that she'd fractured her forearm, but the injury to her non-dominant hand was preferable to a head injury.

Her head was yanked up again as her attacker sought to repeat the action. Desperate, Kate reached around with her right hand, found purchase on a long, slim throat, and _squeezed_. Her attacker faltered, and that was all the opening Kate needed to throw her off. There was a savage wail – Kate wasn't sure if it was her or the person on her – but the hand was ripped from her head (along with a good chunk of her hair) and Kate rolled aside and scrambled to her feet only to come face to face with herself.

The other Kate bared its teeth, eyes wild and fingers shaped into claws. Kate only had time to wish heartily that she wasn't in her wedding dress before the apparition charged at her, both physically and telekinetically.

The first concussive blast hit her in the shoulder, sending her spinning off balance. She dodged a second, but the third hit her square in the gut, dropping her to her knees. Gasping, Kate tried to summon up her telekinesis, but it slipped from her grasp yet again. Desperate, she rolled away from a kick to her ribs and grabbed the other Kate's ankle, bringing her down to the ground. In a heartbeat, Kate had her knee on its chest and her right forearm on its throat.

Kate brought her left palm down on her doppelganger's face with grim purpose and shoved a telepathic spike into her mind –

- only to feel the same agony blossom in the chambers of her own.

Someone was screaming – she wasn't sure whom – but when the pain subsided, her head was pounding and _she _was the one pinned underneath her own body, looking up into a face feral with madness.

She could hear Loki shouting in the distance, the panic and frustration in his voice clear as the Other laughed and foiled his attempts to get to her. The other Kate leaned further into her, digging its nails into her throat, forcing Kate to struggle for air.

_I will consume you and gnaw your bones clean_.

Kate blinked rapidly as black spots began to dance across her vision. There was only one thing left to try, and with her last gurgle, Kate fixed her concentration on the eyes before her – dark, wide, and completely insane.

Kate eased into the mind of the other Kate like sliding into an ice bath in the middle of winter and discovered that it was her own.

* * *

_She was standing in the very same bedroom that they were in now, the red light of sunset slanting through the open windows. The sheets were still brown with blood, and Kate was staring at her wedding and engagement rings on her dressing table, having begged Frigga to hide her from Loki. Her mother-in-law had been fretful and concerned, but as a woman married to Odin for millennia, she understood the need for personal space to heal after ugly confrontations. She'd tried to talk about the baby, but Kate had shut her out and politely requested leave from the court and from Asgard._

_Leave._

"_You can't just keep running from it."_

_Kate jerked her head up to her reflection in the mirror, which glared stonily back at her, tear-tracks etched onto her face. "You can't pretend that you're fine when you aren't."_

_Instead of answering, Kate touched a single fingertip to the mirror's surface and found it to be cool and firm._

"_You can't push away everything that reminds you of our child." Her reflection was getting angrier; Kate pressed her lips into a firm line and turned away._

"_You can't keep Loki out forever."_

_Kate's hand twitched, and she almost knocked her rings off the table._

"_You can't just ignore your grief!"_

_Kate picked the entire mirror up and cast it to the floor, where it shattered, before collapsing into a heap and sobbing like she hadn't allowed herself to sob since that afternoon in the infirmary._

_Her boy. Her Agni._

_Kate clutched at her empty belly and cried harder._

_After what felt like an eternity, she looked up at the sea of glass before her, seeing bits of herself reflected in each tiny shard._

_Hollow cheeks here. Tired eyes there. Ashen skin in all. Agonising pain in everything._

_And Kate saw the toll of divorcing her trauma from herself for so long._

_She'd lost a child, but she was still here. Loki was still here. And her family and friends were still here. It was time to accept what had happened and move on with it._

_Move on with life._

_Kate closed her eyes and said a prayer to Loki, god of the hearth. _May Agni ever be warm in your fires, beloved. May he find shelter from the cold and wilderness. May our son know our love by the light of our spirits. _She felt a weight lift from her chest: the loss of her child still hurt like a mortal wound, but it felt different._

_It felt like it could heal. Not today, and not tomorrow, but eventually._

_Kate felt her spirit lift from her body._

* * *

She slammed back into consciousness, gasping for air as oxygen flooded her brain. Her doppelganger had disappeared, leaving her alone on the floor, panting, marvelling at being alive.

Perhaps she'd marvelled a little too long, because grey fingers wrapped around her upper arm and pulled her to her feet.

Kate inhaled and retched; the monster smelled like rot and sweat and undefined waste, and he was holding her in a vice with his ugly, black sword resting between her shoulder blades. She felt it smile like a fucking cat bathing in cream. "Drop your weapons, Odinson," it warned.

Kate met her husband's furious green eyes and nodded infinitesimally. Loki threw his knives to the ground without hesitation – magic worked just as well as steel. She could see him reaching for a spell in his head, but even as he slicked his sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead and prepared to cast it, she felt the Other's blade slicing through her chest, casually splintering bone as it passed through her ribs.

She sensed, rather than heard, the Other's chuckle as it dropped her like trash and stepped over her body.

Loki's face was twisted in rage, but she could barely make out his words as he screamed at the triumphant monster. It was like she was on the wrong side of a frosted glass barrier, and it was rapidly darkening into a concrete wall.

Her fingers curled as they came into contact with something wet. Bewildered, she looked down – even that small movement sparked a whole new chain reaction of pain – and realised that she was bleeding out faster than she'd realised.

She was going to die.

Kate almost laughed; how ironic it was that after she'd made the decision to live, the Other had taken that decision entirely out of her hands. But if she was going to go, she was going to go with all her guns blazing.

She reached out with her telekinesis, and was unsurprised when it came easily to her. She wrenched the Other's sword from its grasp and capitalised on its confusion by knocking its feet from under it and forcing it to kneel.

Loki paused, stunned by her last burst of power. He made to run to her, but Kate narrowed her eyes at him and directed a final spike of telepathic power into the Other's twisted mind.

The monster roared for the last time.

Loki turned back to it, beheaded it, and was at her side before its head had even hit the ground.

Husband and wife stared at each other for a long moment.

Kate smiled up at him, small and tired, and closed her eyes.

* * *

**A/N: This is the combined chapter 9! **


	11. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the OCs. All this is unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.**

* * *

For an awful moment, Loki felt as if the only air he could breathe was the sickening, swooping vacuum that comprised the Void.

_If you die here, you die there_.

He fumbled taking her pulse manually before sending a pulse of energy into her body.

The relief that accompanied the knowledge that she was still alive – barely – was swiftly engulfed by doubt and a crippling impulse to give up.

Kate's injuries were comparable to Sigyn's. Magic had failed the other woman, so how could he possibly save her? It wasn't like he was a fantastic healer, either; Loki was more used to getting injured than healing others.

_But Sigyn was not his beloved._ That thought loosened limbs stiffened by panic and grief as Loki hunched over his wife with new purpose.

The God of Lies had a promise to keep.

Taking a deep breath, he near emptied himself of magic, forcing all that he could spare into the mess of Kate's torso. The amount of damage was overwhelming: _chipped spinal cord, four broken ribs, collapsed lung, nicked ventricular artery. _Loki fought to keep himself calm as he spread his magic out, repairing the damage to her heart, replenishing blood, mending bones, inflating her lungs, and keeping her brain oxygenated with air forcefully drawn down her windpipe.

_Live_.

After what seemed like an eternity, Loki finally knit the sword's jagged points of entry and exit closed and slumped, exhausted, over Kate. He'd sent her into a healing coma, so that her body could get over the shock of being repaired so rapidly by a foreign presence. His fingers shook as he pushed her hair back from her face; she was so, so pale, but at least she was breathing. At least she was alive, and she would eventually wake.

"I love you," he confessed, voice catching in his throat. "More than you can imagine. More than _I _can imagine."

Kate did not reply.

Closing his eyes again, Loki gathered his wife into his arms and sent them back into their own bodies.

* * *

It seemed like she'd been swimming through darkness for a very long time before she finally surfaced.

She heard quiet mutterings, first – quiet curses coupled with the muted clink of metal on metal. Then she cracked an eyelid open to see a black blob stark against a white wall, which solidified into a TV upon rapid blinking. _The fuck? Did the afterlife come with soap operas?_

Confused, Kate tried to sit up, but only succeeded in sparking a searing pain in her chest. Her quiet gasp heralded a crash to her left, which in turn triggered an explosion of quiet swearing before a hand closed over hers and a face was thrust into her line of vision.

"Jie?" Ian whispered. With a tinge of regret, Kate noted that the anxiety etched into his boyish features made him look far older than he was. She curled her fingers around his.

"Am I dead?" She rasped.

"Nope. Brace yourself, Katie!"

Kate winced as the upper part of the bed was cranked up slowly, manoeuvring her into a seated position. She looked over to the other side of her bed to find Stark thoughtfully sticking a krazy straw into a glass of water before gently feeding it through her lips so she could drink her fill.

Stark talked as she drank. "Loki brought you back. We massacred those chiaturi monsters, no problem, and when we came back, we found Ian kneeling by your bedside and Loki frantically checking your pulse. He looked pretty wiped out, and collapsed after telling us that you'd almost died on the astral plane. We hustled you over to the medical bay, but found that while your body exhibited signs of recent and pretty deep trauma, you'd been completely healed. Loki eventually woke up and informed us that he'd taken care of all the gory stuff, and you'd be fine as long as we let you sleep it off."

Kate's mind was reeling. She _knew _that her injuries were fatal; it must have almost killed Loki to heal her.

Loki.

Suddenly, all she could see was his face: masked and wary as he circled the Other, twisted in fury and horror as she felt the blade slide into her body, openly desperate and grief-stricken as she looked up at him with her life bleeding out.

"You've been asleep for three weeks," Ian picked up the narrative. "You chose the one time that Loki left your side during those three weeks to wake up. Odin wants a full report in person. Both him and Thor are leaving for Asgard tonight."

_Leaving_. "Where is he?" Kate demanded. She _had _to see him. Now. Yesterday. Now.

Stark furrowed his brow in thought. "Queen Elsa? He's in his kingdom of isolation."

Incredulous, Kate stared at him. Clearly, no one understood the urgency blossoming in her ribcage. "Who died and made _you _Tony Snark?"

Stark only laughed. "He's in his room, packing. I'll go get him. C'mon, Squirt." Still chuckling, he strode out of the room, calling cheerily for _Rock of Ages_.

Ian squeezed her hand again and got up, pressing a kiss to her temple. He glanced over his shoulder ruefully; Kate followed his gaze to see a small table overturned and a chessboard and various pieces littering the floor. "I'll clean that up later," her brother informed her sheepishly.

Kate couldn't help but smile. "I love you," she told him, reaching up to grasp his hand.

Ian felt his heart lift. He couldn't remember the last time his sister had smiled like that. He reached down to straighten her comforter. "I love you too."

Loki stepped into the room as Ian slipped out and quietly closed the door behind him.

The silence was deafening.

Hesitantly, Kate patted the space beside her on the bed in invitation. Her husband crossed the room slowly, conjuring a chair and pulling it up by her bedside.

"How do you feel?" he asked, feeling extremely nervous. For all that he knew, Kate was still upset with him. She would thank him for healing her and then tell him to leave her alone forever.

He wasn't quite sure if he could handle that.

"Alive," she replied, worrying her bottom lip. "Thank you for healing me."

"Your death would have been something I could not have borne."

"I love you."

Loki's shoulders sagged in relief.

Kate laid her hand palm up on the bed; Loki took it gently and pressed it to his cheek. "I love you," she said again, brushing her fingers against the cliff of his cheekbone. "I'm sorry for running out on us. I'm sorry for taking so long to forgive you. I love you."

"And I am sorry for all of the pain I caused you," Loki breathed. "I am sorry for how I behaved that afternoon – that terrible afternoon – that was not how I ought to have treated those whom I love. That was not how I ought to have treated you. I love you, Kate. I love you."

They were both quiet for a while, drinking in the sight of each other.

_Safe. Whole. Healthy._

"The Widow said that we need counselling," Loki ventured, watching his wife's expression.

Kate sighed, rubbing at her eyes with the hand that wasn't encased in Loki's. "She's right. I could ask Pepper to recommend someone who'll be discreet. Unless they have marriage counsellors and therapists in Asgard…?"

Loki shook his head. "We will get it done here. I would like to stay here, for a while. Recuperate. Train with Ian. That boy saved us all, Kate. If it had not been for him, we would have never shut the portals channelling the chiaturi to Midgard."

Kate exhaled, feeling slightly bittersweet. She was glad, of course, that the chiaturi hadn't totalled New York, and she was proud of her heroic younger brother, but he had been just a boy. He'd just left his childhood behind him forever. But she only turned to her husband and smiled crookedly. "You'll both have to tell me what happened, then. And don't tell my parents. I don't think that they'll take very well to their baby being in life-and-death situations."

Loki saw through that in a heartbeat. He leaned over and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "We all grow up," he told her. "Some just have to do it faster than others. He's still your little brother. You will always be his _jie jie_."

Kate had to giggle at his pronunciation, and the mood lightened. They sat there in amicable silence as the shadows lengthened through the room and the sun began to sink behind the glass buildings across the city.

"I must depart," Loki finally said, running his thumb in circles around the back of Kate's hand. "I will return in three days; by then, you ought to be moving around. Drink plenty of fluids, practice walking again, and do not challenge Stark to wheelchair racing."

Kate stifled her laugh upon realising that her husband was serious about the racing. "I promise." She just wouldn't tell him and hope that no one else told him when she won money off Stark.

Loki's brows snapped together. Fuck. He could totally tell that she was lying.

Then he relented, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. "I have charmed your wheelchair to make it go faster if you tap the right arm twice. Split your winnings with me, fifty-fifty."

Kate couldn't stop grinning. _Just like old times._

Loki stopped at the door, turning back to look at her one last time. In answer to the question in his eyes, Kate smiled at him and opened her arms wide.

He was in her arms before she realised that he'd moved. He buried his face into her shoulder as she inhaled his scent: leather, ink and the fresh bloom of the world after a thunderstorm.

"We'll be ok," she whispered, tightening her hold on him as he held her as carefully as a glass bird.

His voice was rough as he echoed her words back into her ear.

"We'll be ok."

* * *

**A/N: It's over! It's finally over! Thank you to all of you who've been here and reviewing and being encouraging bunnies; I thank you all from the bottom of my happy little heart.**

**Of course, more reviews are always welcome. You are all loved.**

**Jie / Jie Jie: Mandarin Chinese for "older sister". **


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